Ε

. Ζουμπούλη

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Based Microblogging Platforms and Museological Curation

Διπλωματική Εργασία Understanding Image-Based Microblogging Platforms’ Impact on Visual Perception as a Novel Step to Museological Curation and Communication Επιβλέπουσα Καθηγήτρια: Ευτυχία Ζουμπούλη Μ. Σκαλτσά, καθηγήτρια Ιστορίας της Τέχνης και Μουσειολογίας Α.Π.Θ. Αρχιτέκτονας

Σύμβουλοι: Π. Μπίκας, Διδάκτωρ Ιστορίας της Τέχνης του Α.Π.Θ.

Λ. Γυιόκα, επίκουρη καθηγήτρια Ιστορίας και Θεωρίας της Τέχνης Α.Π.Θ.

Η παρούσα εργασία αποτελεί πνευματική ιδιοκτησία συγγραφέων και επιβλεπόντων. Η έγγραφη συναίνεσή τους είναι απαραίτητη για οποιαδήποτε χρήση της εργασίας από τρίτους. Συγγραφείς και επιβλέποντες μπορούν να δημοσιοποιήσουν την εργασία για επιστημονικούς λόγους, Ακαδημαϊκός κύκλος σπουδών 2014 - 2016 Θεσσαλονίκη 2016 υπό την προϋπόθεση της αναφοράς όλων των συντελεστών της. 2016

ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΕΙΟ ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ

ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΔΥΤΙΚΗΣ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ

Διαπανεπιστημιακό Διατμηματικό Πρόγραμμα Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών “Μουσειολογία-Διαχείριση Πολιτισμού” Τμήμα Αρχιτεκτόνων – Πολυτεχνική Σχολή

Ακαδημαϊκός κύκλος σπουδών 2014-2016

Διπλωματική εργασία Understanding Image-Based Microblogging Platforms’ Impact on Visual Perception as a Novel Step to Museological Curation and Communication Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες και η Επιρροή τους στην Οπτική Αντίληψη ως Καινοτομία στη Μουσειολογική Επιμέλεια και Επικοινωνία Ευτυχία Ζουμπούλη Αρχιτέκτονας

Θεσσαλονίκη 2016

ΑΡΙΣΤΟΤΕΛΕΙΟ ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗΣ

ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΔΥΤΙΚΗΣ ΜΑΚΕΔΟΝΙΑΣ

Δ.Δ.Π.Μ.Σ. “Μουσειολογία-Διαχείριση Πολιτισμού” Τμήμα Αρχιτεκτόνων – Πολυτεχνική Σχολή

Ακαδημαϊκός κύκλος σπουδών 2014-2016

Διπλωματική εργασία Understanding Image-Based Microblogging Platforms’ Impact on Visual Perception as a Novel Step to Museological Curation and Communication Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες και η Επιρροή τους στην Οπτική Αντίληψη ως Καινοτομία στη Μουσειολογική Επιμέλεια και Επικοινωνία Ευτυχία Ζουμπούλη Αρχιτέκτονας

Θεσσαλονίκη 2016

Επιβλέπουσα: Μ. Σκαλτσά, καθηγήτρια Ιστορίας της Τέχνης και Μουσειολογίας Α.Π.Θ.

Ειδικοί Σύμβουλοι: Π. Μπίκας, Διδάκτωρ Ιστορίας της Τέχνης του Α.Π.Θ. Λ. Γυιόκα, επίκουρη καθηγήτρια Ιστορίας και Θεωρίας της Τέχνης Α.Π.Θ.

Η παρούσα εργασία αποτελεί πνευματική ιδιοκτησία συγγραφέων και επιβλεπόντων. Η έγγραφη συναίνεσή της είναι απαραίτητη για οποιαδήποτε χρήση της εργασίας από τρίτους. Συγγραφείς και επιβλέποντες μπορούν να δημοσιοποιήσουν την εργασία για επιστημονικούς λόγους, υπό την προϋπόθεση της αναφοράς όλων των συντελεστών της. Understanding Image-Based Microblogging Platforms’ Impact on Visual Perception as a Novel Step to Museological Curation and Communication

Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες και η Επιρροή τους στην Οπτική Αντίληψη ως Καινοτομία στη Μουσειολογική Επιμέλεια και Επικοινωνία

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...... - 3 - 1.1 Preface and Acknowledgments ...... - 3 - 1.2 Objectives ...... - 3 - 1.3 Scope ...... - 4 - 1.4 Methodology ...... - 4 - 1.5 Structure Overview ...... - 4 -

CHAPTER 2 DEMOCRATIZATION OF TECHNOLOGIES AND THE EMERGENCE OF IBMPS - 5 - 2.1 Introductory Remarks ...... - 5 - 2.2 The Margins of Media Democratization: From Art Gatekeepers to Smartphone Owners ...... - 9 - 2.3 Museum 2.0 ...... - 14 - 2.4 Image-based Microblogging Platforms ...... - 17 - 2.4.1 Platforms ...... - 17 - 2.4.2 Microblogging: Theoretical Description and Empirical Presentation of Three Key Platforms ...... - 19 - a. Tumblr…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..- 23 -

b. Pinterest………………………………………………………………………….…………………………….- 27 -

c. Instagram…………………………………………………….…………………………………………………- 31 -

2.4.3 IBMPs Demographics ...... - 34 - 2.5 Communicating Images via IBMPs in the Context of the Museum ...... - 35 - 2.5.1 The Impact of IBMPs on User Pictorial Behavior ...... - 36 - 2.5.2 IBMPs as Agents of Impact: the Non-Human Agency Hypothesis and its Implications ...... - 39 -

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CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL VIEWPOINTS AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: NEW MEDIA AND THE EXHIBITIONAL APPROACH TO IBMPS IN THE RESHAPING OF THE MUSEUM ...... - 41 - 3.1 McLuhan and the Medium’s Message ...... - 42 - 3.2 Lev Manovich, the Language of New Media and the Hybrid Transcoding Nature of Users, Platforms and Objects ...... - 44 - 3.3 The Exhibitional Approach to IBMPs, Non-Human Curation and the Context Collapse ...... ….- 49 -

CHAPTER 4 THE COLLAPSING VIRTUAL MUSEUM AND THE POWER OF THE IMAGE: DISCUSSING MUSEOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AFTER IBMPS ...... - 55 - 4.1 The Recurrence of the Physical: Is the Virtual Museum Dead? ...... - 55 - 4.2 The Actual Impact of IBMPs on their Users’ Visual Perception: Images, Connectivity and the Path to Pictorial Literacy ...... - 59 - 4.3 Incorporating the Many-to-Many Model through IBMPs in the Museum: Communication Strategies and Emerging Skills ...... - 64 - 4.4 Museums Utilizing IBMPs Effectively: Some Examples ...... - 71 -

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS ...... - 77 -

APPENDIX: EXTENDED ABSTRACT IN GREEK ...... - 80 -

REFERENCES ...... - 96 -

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Preface and Acknowledgments

The present paper has been conducted as a Master Thesis for the completion of the Museology Master Programme of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The topic was decided by the author and further discussed and confirmed in conjunction with the supervising team, to which I am grateful.

1.2 Objectives

Image-Based Microblogging Platforms (IBMPs), online services for the hosting and networked circulation of images begin to become integral in our everyday status, and an emergent portion of literature on museology already studies their relation with the museum. This paper’s objectives are manifold, relating to the modification of visual perception in our age and the novel understanding of museum under these conditions. We initially set these technical advancements in context, as part of the Web 2.0 philosophy and the reconceptualization of authoritative knowledge content gatekeepers. Then, we present the nature of these image-based platforms, providing with exemplar presentation of the three most popular ones, namely Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram. In studying the related literature we aimed at criticizing unrealistic views based on false assumptions regarding virtual possibilities for visitors and museums mediated by IBMPs. Finally, the most important aim of the present paper is to critically synthesize a model of practice for museums to employ for the maximization of mutual benefits for both the museum and the visitor. We emphasize on the impact that pictorial online platforms have upon their users’ visual perception as that user might be a potential member of a museum audience. Succinctly, our central research question investigates the role IBMPs play in the modification of appreciation of visual stimuli and the implication this has for the museological context.

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Generally, the extended elaboration on the topic has been limited by two factors: the relatively short time IBMPs are in widespread usage, thus constraining the ability for inclusive conclusions of their effects in the long term, and subsequently the relatively narrow amount of specified literature.

1.3 Scope

The paper is directed specifically to museologists, curators, and museum managers which would be benefitted by a holistic understanding of the potential museum visitors’ visual perception and the operational impact image-based social media have in the development of contemporary museological strategies. Regardless of the necessary interdisciplinary approach of the present research, the overall project is enframed within the field of museology. However, due to the focus on the nature of online platforms, the research draws on media studies. As said above, the literature on the topic is still relatively narrow, thus, elements had to be borrowed from neighboring fields for the construction of solid argumentation. The results are expected to have practical implications if taken into consideration by museum professionals holding responsibility for the establishment of relations between the museum and the audience. The paper’s originality lies in the fact that no other research has been published regarding specifically the image-based social media’s impact on museum experiences, as resulting from the transformations in visual perception in an image-saturated world.

1.4 Methodology

The paper is a theoretical and conceptual navigation constructed after literature review and critical reflection. As previously mentioned, we have utilized theories stemming from or connected to media and museum studies. In presenting the features of IBMPs, we have briefly included some empirical elements to the research for applying the theoretical tools.

1.5 Structure Overview

This paper’s corpus is divided into three main chapters. The first presents IBMPs both in terms of their historical-technological emergence and their functional features, ending up

- 4 - with our research questions, namely (a) what is the kind of modification they impose upon potential museum visitors and (b) what implications does this have for the role and purpose of the museums and the museologist. The second part reflects on media theory and other related literature to address the first research question. The third part aims at providing with realistic replies to the second main research question, both conceptually and by offering specific examples of IBMPs’ successful utilization in museums and art institutions so far. Finally, the last brief chapter summarizes this paper’s conclusions.

CHAPTER 2 DEMOCRATIZATION OF TECHNOLOGIES AND THE EMERGENCE OF IBMPS

2.1 Introductory Remarks

Humans exist in societies and use technical means to represent their social existence in various ways, one of which, currently the most predominant, is the visual. The majority of social phenomena is photographed and shared online. Objects of visual documentation and expression are widely disseminated in contemporary societies through a plethora of online social media platforms, but mostly through IBMPs. An analogy between online sources of pictorial dissemination and museums - institutes responsible for the preservation and presentation of human culture documentation - can easily be noticed. The increasing amount of material uploaded and the predominance of IBMPs over platforms focusing on other means of communication (textual or audio), implies several observations about the contemporary development of the users’ visual perception. The more we observe how users tend to upload their visual experiences, the more we understand how they experience the visual. As long as users become accustomed to a novel relation with their visually documented material, audiences will expect the museum to be aligned with contemporary visual culture, as this is overwhelmingly mediated via IBMPs. Most of today’s youths are active in at least one very popular online image hosting platform, equally consuming, producing and sharing contents. Therefore, they should expect that museums, as cultural centers presenting visual experiences, are to be transformed according to the new technological features. Economou has thoroughly demonstrated the general impact of new

- 5 - technologies, such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and more recently mobile applications (for instance Economou, 1998, Economou & Meintani, 2011, Tost & Economou, 2006):

“Challenging the unique authority of the curator, they invited visitors to actively create their own meaning from the collections, encouraging existing audiences to interact in new ways with the objects, as well as reaching out to new audiences. In this process, museums have been experimenting with different strategies and practices, exploring, among others, the use of new technologies which were developing very fast, permeating every aspect of social life.” (Economou & Meintani, 2011, p. 1)

Taking this observation as a point of departure, we wish to examine the impact of pictorial- based online tools in both the user’s experience of the museum and the museum’s further reshaping according to the nature of these media. “Modes of visual mediation are clearly influenced by material culture and historical trajectories in museums” (De Rijcke & Beaulieu, 2011, p. 666). As long as images tend to be, as said, the prevalent means of communication, the phenomenon of returning to the visual after a long intermission of text-centered communication qualifies the following generalization: contemporary implications regarding the user’s perception of the visual field have a further impact on the perceptive functions regarding non-pictorial fields. The observation that IBMPs become integral to our everyday status, could be a sign of change for our ontological self-conception. In a rapidly moving and changing world, where users tend to consume images simply by scrolling down on their smartphones’ screens, the museum should take into consideration such a paradigm and build experiences that manifest their richness and inclusiveness, even if one doesn’t have the time to contemplate a lot in front of each exhibit. Online platform users are also accustomed, as we will exemplify in the main corpus, to a rather automated “curation” of the images displayed on their screens, according to their previously stated preferences. Possibly, new generations of museum visitors will not grasp the value, or even the existence of a human curator’s work for an exhibition’s realization. They might consider that museum artifacts, displaced within a certain museological context, belong to a context that is not their own if they don’t find elements to relate with. By entering a museum, rapidly trying to find their way out, they will feel like scrolling down on someone else’s uninteresting platform profile. Hence, museums should offer visual direct experiences that one may instantly feel related to, becoming motivated to stay and interact with the pictorial content,

- 6 - simultaneously in a personalized and in a meaningful way (as museological making of meaning is described by Hooper-Greenhill & Moussouri, 2001).

Before proceeding with anything else, it is important to clarify what we define as “image” and how it is differentiated from “picture.” We acknowledge the vast discourse which embraces the topic (for instance, Belting, 2011, p. 1-7), but we would like to adopt a definition that takes into account the mediation factor, that is, the significance of the role of media for the understanding of “image” and “picture” distinction. Belting explores the theme in detail, starting by the basic differentiation in regards to the picture’s materiality and tangibility and the image’s mental and relational character. Pictures are objects and sometimes images may reside upon them. Images are relations between the physical and the mental, interplaying with these boundaries, mostly reflecting the user’s subject quest (ibid., p. 2).

Having settled the definition dichotomy between image and picture, Belting further elaborates on a deeper and more difficult distinction, especially relevant to our study’s course: the difference between image and medium. He emphasizes on the necessary recognition of a “third parameter” in the human-image interaction, and that is the medium, which in his words acts like a agent between the human and image. He explicitly negates the direct equation “images as media,” suggesting that the mental character of images is in need of a certain vector of expression. Due to the image’s necessity to be expressed somehow, we tend to confuse the medium of expression with the image. That is, we take an image as a picture. Image entails a paradox in its definition: it is the “presence of an absence” (ibid., p. 6, emphasis by the author). The image’s only way to render its invisibility visible is the mediation, be it a stone, a canvas, a printed photograph, or, in our case, an IBMP. When studying IBMPs, we have this distinction of “pictures” and “images” in mind, but we use the terms interchangeably, denoting only the meaning of “image” in both cases. Our research does not examine the physicality or materiality of media and images, hence the picture- image differentiation is out of our scope.

The present introduction wishes to enframe the research within theoretical technological, media, and visual studies field - with digitally mediated visual perception as its focal point in relation to museology. “[W]e think through representation not in terms of the repetitive debates of epistemology, but rather ontologically” (Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor, 2011, p.

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9). We briefly present the historical and technological conditions responsible for the emergence of IBMPs. These conditions combined with a thorough analysis of IBMPs’ nature eventually lead to our hypothesis formation in relation to museology and curation in the end of the chapter.

Technology and society can be studied as an inseparable evolutionary process between users and their tools. Our technological environments can be utilized as a teaching machine for our self-conception. This implies that technical means, due to their in-betweenness have a simultaneous impact on the user and the environment, teaching us a lot about how we see ourselves in the world. The turn of popular tools towards visual expression and the following predominance of image in our communicative expression are tendencies undeniably observed. We hereby utilize this observation as a point of departure for developing a more specific question: Do IBMPs further affect their users’ visual perception, and if yes, in what ways? Would it be legitimate to further reflect on this centrality of the visual, as a factor of impact on platform users’ self-understanding? And what are the implications such a novel self-conception will bring in the context of the museum?

Before addressing these questions, we need to to set the prevalence of IBMPs’ popularity in technical-historical context. On the one hand, technical democratization rendered visual stimuli consumption and production available to everyone due to the price decrease of smart technologies and the development of Web 2.0 practices. On the other hand, the boundaries between pictorial audiences and experts seem to break down, possibly due to the previous sociotechnical evolution. These two aspects have certainly prepared the ground for the popularization of IBMPs, everyone’s means for consuming images and contributing to the visual society. The subsequent subchapters present firstly this twofold sociotechnical evolution, secondly an exploration of IBMPs’ characteristics, and thirdly some behavioral attributes of IBMPs’ users as described the related state-of-the-art, which we wish to challenge afterwards. We also refer to the already established term of “Museum 2.0,” denoting a vision of a museum deeply affected by the nature of new technologies, which we suggest should be criticized and more carefully re-examined in the light of specifically pictorial-based online platforms.

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2.2 The Margins of Media Democratization: From Art Gatekeepers to Smartphone Owners

“A person in contemporary culture sees more constructed images in a day than someone living a few centuries ago did in a lifetime” (Feigenson & Spiesel, in Porter, 2014, p. 1699). This happens as a result of a technological democratization process which allows simultaneously: (a) high definition photographic capturing of experiences, (b) literacy of photo-manipulation software, which is often of no charge, and (c) pictorial availability through a growing amount of searchable image-hosting platforms, combined to fast internet connections. Porter is thoroughly analytical in describing the explosion of visual culture in terms of technological evolution in the market, from the increase of computing devices in households after the year 2000, to the introduction of camera-holding cellphones together with online platforms for hosting and disseminating digital images (such as Flickr, Facebook, and YouTube), promoting visual communication. Numbers speak for themselves. Within a few years from Facebook’s initiation, it hosted twenty billion photos. 2011 counted eighty billion digital photos taken (ibid. p. 1719). While before our history’s commodification with computers, data produced by humanity were estimated to be 12 exabytes, and 180 in 2006, it was calculated that after the year 2011 we have entered the era of zettabyte - with an expectation of the amount to grow fourfold every three years (Floridi, 2014, p. 13). “The history of the Web suggests that the velocity of data will only increase,” as Carr puts it (2011). An average high definition DSLR camera of 2005 generated images of approximately 3-5 megabytes each. By 2012 the size has been tripled. We, thus, understand the impactful magnitude of images as contributing to the data stream. The desire for better pictures is unquenchable, since images tend to inhabit a central position in our means of communication. The better the quality, the better the detail in preserving and evoking a pictorial experience. All these verifications of pictorial centrality led to the dramatic decrease of smart devices’ cost, allowing for the vast majority of the population’s access or possession of them. This is the economic aspect of media democratization process.

The other aspect, which we may denote as operational, is the democratization of usage of tools for the very construction of the new media objects. This process has been founded by the evolution of Web 2.0 - which is intertwined with the economic side of the democratization process. Economic and operational democratization evolved together, and each side’s evolutionary steps enable similar evolving processes to the other side: the more available free of charge platforms there are, the greater the demand for more and cheaper

- 9 - devices - and the more smart devices there are, the greater the increasing need for sophisticated platforms will be. Users who were accustomed in using the new tools, eventually developed needs for devices and platforms specified for those. Web 2.0 philosophy emerged necessarily after these needs were expressed. As a side-effect of every democratization process, it challenged the expertise of authorities and experts in various fields of intellectual activity. O’Reilly (2008) demonstrates thoroughly the transition from traditional expert-based centrally oriented websites (for instance, Britannica Online) to peripherally oriented folk-based ones (as Wikipedia). Web 2.0 was a phenomenon of reevaluation in regard to expertise gatekeeping.

Social tagging is, perhaps, the most famous example of Web 2.0 tools: an object’s description does not depend only on the uploader’s efforts for describing, but also lies in “the eyes of the beholder.” Pictures that have been uploaded under very specific intentions may acquire quite different meanings when “tagged” by many users that perceive them otherwise. Accordingly, Web 2.0 marks the official transition from “taxonomies” (a priori forms of intended classification for fixed directories from online administrators) to “folksonomies” (a posteriori genre creation from people interested in a topic). As O’Reilly explains it, “[t]he central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence” (2008, p. 23). The discussion about Web 2.0 has several branches, but for this paper’s scope we maintain that the Web 2.0-born “wisdom of the crowds,” has a profound impact on the individual’s mind, in terms of being in dialogue with existent or potential images. ”[T]he activity pictured becomes much more visible, more public” (Van House, 2011, p. 128), and IBMPs’ audiences are simultaneously producers and consumers. Pictorial directness becomes an accelerated expression of collective desires.

The hierarchical breakdown of the pre-Web 2.0 centralized authorship to decentralized participatory collective production of knowledge meets an analogy at the dismantling of hierarchies in the art scene. Arora & Vermeylen question straightforwardly: “Do social media dismantle age-old hierarchies and level the playing field in art evaluations?” (2013, p. 195). In order to provide with a realistic answer we first need to take into account the historical evolution of the intermediary between the art consuming audience and the object of art. What is currently at stake is a “consensus building,” “instrumental in the art world”(p. 200).

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Before the digital age and Web 2.0, this consensus was left to art gatekeepers. A shift is now taking place, but we need to examine shortly the historical evolution of the artwork mediation process for a better view of the challenge.

Arora & Vermeylen divide the evolution of this relation into four major steps from the post- medieval modernity and after. During the Renaissance, the first specialized art theorists came to declare the “intrinsic value of a work of art” and the “excellence of a piece” (2013, p. 201). Late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries marked the passage to the emporium of the work of art by the development of public sales together with the evolving genres of newspaper artistic auction advertisements and printed catalogues for the sales. The art theorist then merged with the figure of the art expert-auctioneer (p. 202) with emphasis on the role of that age’s new media for “taste formation” (p. 203). The passage to the nineteenth century and the movement towards the twentieth sees the emergence of rather recognizable intermediating art experts: figures like the museum curator, the educated and trained art historian, the gallerist, the art critic of the art journal, and the member of the art academy invade the scene (p. 204). These intermediaries were established, and one may say, thenceforth stabilized - however, the internet explosion currently challenges their role and position. The legacy of the past two centuries regarding the position of media between audience and objects of art lies in their servitude as legitimators to art evaluation and as biographical and canonical establishers of art history. The media of the time served as endorsements and marketing provokers between institutional gatekeepers, affiliated artists, and interested audiences, collectors and academics (p. 208).

As Arora & Vermeylen put it, the internet caused a shift from the work of art’s origin (its creator) towards its ontology of content: “what is said counts more than who says it” (p. 204). New media, social platforms, Web 2.0 tools, function as “information asymmetries” reducers, mediators between actors and simulators of knowledge preservation and construction in the art world. However, this does not mean they devalue the importance of curation, or of mediation. On the contrary, in their way, they modify and augment it. Like all kinds of media in (art) history, new media still determine the “artistic, social and financial value of a work of art” (ibid.). The possible impression of new media being the miraculous redeemers from the mediator is non-realistic. The debate rather focuses on the correct identification of the true contemporary art expert within the complex context of the

- 11 - worldwide art web, especially due to the expansion of the pool of actors dealing with art quality and knowledge (p. 201). More than challenging art expertise in terms of the mediary, the democratizing attributes of new media, as shown above, introduced the audience’s involvement in the active process of art valuation (p. 209), and by doing so, questioned the traditional role of art gatekeepers. The notion of democratization, however, should be taken with a grain of salt. Democratization should not be confused with the sudden disappearance of every kind of mediator or hierarchy. Practically, the “wisdom of the crowds” does not become a deus ex machina for art evaluation. As Arora, & Vermeylen correctly mark out, positive mass endorsements, such as “likes” and “faves” denote rather a proliferation of contemporary kitsch and “commercial” labeling - “low quality art” (p. 207). Public opinion impacts valuation, however, in a sense analogous with the pre-digital standardization of “high” and “low” art depending on the popularity digest and the art curator expertise responsible for filling the semantic gap between artwork availability and art appreciation. Indexing and categorizing become processes negotiated publicly (p. 205). The construction and dissemination of art knowledge develops a need for standardization, greater than the one offered by traditional gatekeepers, more demanding and more complicated. In conclusion, we agree with Arora, & Vermeylen’s main four positions for the maintenance of hierarchies:

(1) virtual amateur participation still adheres to hierarchical structures; (2) it does not necessarily result in a more equitable say in art valuations; (3) expertise is privileged, not only because of knowledge but also because of institutional linkages, separating them from the amateurs; and (4) the role of participation itself needs to be extricated from the normative assumptions of it being positive and inherently democratic. Instead, it can also be viewed as a process that serves as a novel platform for institutional marketing and entertainment in the new media age, possibly reinforcing and strengthening the role of conventional experts (p. 196).

In such a perplexed environment, the curating role meets a need for a better understanding on ways to look for who the true expert is. Certainly, it is neither the “crowd,” nor the single “gatekeeper.” Definitely, the all-inclusiveness approach goes hand in hand with the flattening of hierarchies (p. 206), yet “flattening” isn’t synonymous with “discarding” - “hierarchies in the art world are here to stay; institutional linkages matter” (p. 210). An online platform user being in contact with vast amounts of objects of art has no experience of a visible mediator, and very often no traditional gatekeeper is even involved in the process. The nature of media has changed the nature of our perception in art, like in all

- 12 - other layers of the social fabric. This change is extended to the role images play in our everyday life, since new media not only affect our hierarchical relation with artistic images, but also allow images in general to invade pervasively our environments:

“The explosion in the number of circulating images and in the variety of platforms for seeing those images has transformed the way people read, write, and think. Whether on a bus, on a plane, at home, on the street, in a café, or in the office, we do not only see a seemingly infinite array of images, but we interact with them: zooming in, changing perspective, mapping where they were taken, commenting on them, flipping through a series of images with our fingers, or instantly sharing them by text, email, or social network. We read in a new, digital-visual-fashion” (Porter, 2014, p. 1719)

Democratization comes together with advancements in quality and quantity of images “thanks to the increased functionality and instant feedback and of digital cameras and the image processing available in even basic image-management software” (Van House, 2011, p. 128), combined with ready access to network capabilities via tablets, smartphones, laptops, and an increasing number of “wi-fi spots” rendering the online/offline dichotomy irrelevant. Images “may be viewed, uploaded, emailed, posted online and so forth immediately after making” (ibid.) providing with an instant verification of one’s existence and elements of identity. “Digital cameras and especially camera-phones support spontaneous, opportunistic image-making and experimentation. While people still make traditional kinds of images, what is considered photo-worthy has expanded to include the everyday” (Van House, 2011, p. 127). Likewise, the boundary between artist and spectator seems to finally break down, since the majority of sophisticated device owners become potential artists, with no special training, but out of pure experimentation, and possibly through online tutorials. Narrowed down to photography: “with the advanced capabilities of digital SLRs along with online image posting, more people are engaging in art photography” (ibid., p. 131-132), and this is also true of music, literature and other artistic forms of expression.

These mutually evolving processes have certain effects upon IBMPs users, which we attempt to address. After Web 2.0, users are linked to images and other users through platforms which act as non-human curators. Our position here is not the need of a complete dismantling of the “curator” in IBMP contexts. Quite the opposite, we insist on the need for the curatorial role’s specified location and its maintenance, rethinking, and expansion. As we

- 13 - are to further demonstrate especially in the fourth chapter, contemporary curatorship and museology shall be enhanced by skills regarding social media and related practices.

2.3 Museum 2.0

The term “Museum 2.0” has been coined by Nina Simon, denoting her vision of a participatory museum, based on her analogy between closed Web 1.0 sites and museums. In a nutshell, she believes that museums should follow the Web 2.0 example and become open to the production of contents on behalf of their visitors as the same happened with website users:

“The web started with sites (1.0) that are authoritative content distributors--like traditional museums. The user experience with web 1.0 is passive; you are a viewer, a consumer. Web 2.0 removes the authority from the content provider and places it in the hands of the user. Now, you are a participant. You determine what’s on the site, and you judge which content is most valuable. [...] I believe that museums have the potential to undergo a similar (r)evolution as that on the web, to transform from static content authorities to dynamic platforms for content generation and sharing. I believe that visitors can become users, and museums central to social interactions. Web 2.0 opens up opportunity, but it also demonstrates where museums are lacking.” (Simon, 2006)

Based on Simon’s assumption, we wish to elaborate thoroughly on a specific aspect of the museological evolution under process, namely the impact of visual Web 2.0 tools in visual perception, which in turn calls, as we assume, for a reconsideration of the way museums should be structured. According to the International Commission of Museum’s (ICOM) code of ethics, “museums have an important duty to develop their educational role and attract wider audiences from the community, locality, or group they serve. Interaction with the constituent community and promotion of their heritage is an integral part of the educational role of the museum” (n.d.). Interpreting this principle, we may suggest that in order for museums to attract members of the community that are accustomed to new visual technologies, they should embed the online visual platforms’ characteristics and features on their overall policies, in terms of design and structuring. Hence, the purpose of this paper becomes twofold: understanding the impact of IBMPs on their users’ visual perception on

- 14 - the one hand, and on the other hand, addressing what such an impact would mean for future museum strategies.

From Web 2.0’s infancy, Shahani et. al. (2008) have already elaborated on its impact for museum institutions. They define the museums’ relation to technology precisely “as a means of embracing new mediums of communication as well as coming to terms with the technological evolution of contemporary society” (2008, p. 1). This is to say that by definition if there is a relation between the angles of the triangle museum-technology-society, this relation will be fruitfully maintained by the incorporation of new technologies in the museum. Museum and society reflect each other through technology, more or less in the same manner as society is reflected upon its means of technology, and so on. By the usage of new means for communicating the museum’s content and context, the very notion of the museum, as well as the physical institutions themselves, enter phases of renegotiation and reinvention (ibid. p. 2). Shahani et. al. elaborate on new tools’ impact upon the museum’s digital representation, mostly in the case of their websites (p. 3-4 - we may now add here the emergence of social media, and for instance a museum’s profile in a rather open-ended platform like Facebook). They are indeed correct in drawing argumentation from Web 2.0’s “infrastructure of participation” (p. 2) for new potentialities opening to users in terms of the museum’s contents’ interpretation and after the needed contemplation of the latter to the field of digital curation (p. 5-6). Negating the one-way practice of curation and embracing the participants’ perspectives towards the given material constructs a wholly novel approach to curatorial practice that is adding on to its creative nature.

Furthermore, Shahani et. al. mention the difficulties in aligning Web 2.0’s dynamic nature with the museum’s rather static one, which is often synonymous with the term “repository of knowledge and history.” In other words, the enthusiasm with Web 2.0 should not blur the limits between “experience” of the participant and “expertise” of the professional, no matter the delicacy of a less authoritative notion. Indeed, the risk of “amateurism” is lurking behind the door of open-ended practises (p. 9-10), but still we should argue - seven years after the specific article’s publication - that this beast exists in the minds of people that are new and unaccustomed to Web 2.0. Educational programmes and training workshops are becoming very popular in several fields in order to get the most out of the dynamics of Web 2.0, and museums are not to be excluded from the process. Shahani et. al. question the ephemerality of technology (p. 14) and whether the Web 2.0 tools will be able to sustain their premises instead of getting abandoned like many previous passing technological

- 15 - trends. From their very introductory notes, it’s clearly manifested that they do not aim to promote the virtual museum as a substitute to the physical (p. 2-3). Their considerations are justified given the time the article was written, but it is important to note two other considerations that do not necessarily come in contrast to theirs, but perhaps complement them in terms of the current technological evolutionary process. Primarily, it is obvious that Web 2.0 is not surpassed as a practice. As we exemplify later on, the impact of social tagging and of several other post-Web 2.0 mainstream platforms (such as Tumblr and Instagram which we investigate in detail later) is crucial in the sense that it is reshaping the visitor’s experience in and out of the museum, both the physical and the digital aspects of it. Nonetheless, rather than what the new technologies cause to the physical substance of the museum, in this paper we are investigating the conceptual and perceptional shift of the museum’s role is in regards to contemporary cultural dissemination, preservation and generation.

Thus, while in this subchapter we reflected on Web 2.0’s philosophy and values as a modifying factor for the museum’s physical presence and its relation to the participants, the next subchapter draws on image-based online tools as a shifter for the notion of the museum and visual perception in general. Such a notion is not to be found in the frame of the museum’s digital representation (i.e. the virtual museum), but it consists of an entirely new approach to aesthetics which is giving birth to new forms of perception of contents, contexts, and intentions from the user/participant’s side. It is necessary to note that the vision of a completely digital/virtual museum has been found unrealistic. A constant return to the physical aspect was observed, oppositely. What we investigate here, is not a dematerialization process of the museum content, but what implications the new media will have to the museum’s physical grounding. Traditionally, museums have always been associated with archiving and the documentation of history as a fixed process, while the Web has been associated with networking and continuous renewal of its contents as a dynamic process. What we witness today, is a hybridization of those processes. Web is often used as the means for archiving historical evidence (from the distant past as in Archive.org to the recent events, as vlogging on YouTube). Museological trends become more sophisticated, expressing efforts for being aligned with the contemporary spirit of the times that requires constant modification and transformation, and this is valid even for strictly historical museums. Before proceeding to an analysis of the impact of new visual tools on visual perception and hence museological appreciation, we need to examine IBMPs’

- 16 - structure in greater detail, to understand these new environments the average user (and potential museum visitor) becomes accustomed to.

2.4 Image-based Microblogging Platforms

The aforementioned economic and operational factors of Web 2.0 set the foundations for the development of IBMPs, media specialized in the circulation of images as the basic type of communication and identity formation between users. We will now describe the constituting elements of IBMPs in further detail, to comprehend the virtual environments built within them and the reasons for studying them afterwards in media-theoretical and museological contexts. After a general examination of what is hereby defined as “platform” and “microblogging,” we introduce the three most successful representatives of the image-based genre so far, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest, followed by examples of their usage taking the value of an indicative case study for a clearer view of the platforms’ features. Thereafter, we present some user behavior studies, examining the development of user-IBMP relation, which we challenge in this chapter’s final part.

2.4.1 Platforms

As technologies and needs for varying forms of expression advance, novel terms are added to the cultural vocabulary. Often, their form of expression is similar to a pre-existing one, for instance, in the terms “network,” “follow,” “web,” “cloud,” “stream,” “troll,” or “at.” The term “platform” has undergone an analogous shift of meaning. When a term has been accustomed in everyday usage by the common sense, it seems that it resonates within a vast number of levels of comprehension and within different and even distant activities of life. In a nutshell, “platform” denotes the online representation of a mediator offering a series of services. Examples are websites like YouTube.com (offering video circulation services), Amazon.com (marketing services), and Google.com (search engine services). “The term ‘platform’ has emerged recently as an increasingly familiar term in the description of the online services of content intermediaries, both in their self-characterizations and in the more public discourse of users, the press, and commentators” (Gillespie, 2010). Tarleton Gillespie,

- 17 - in his article “The Politics of Platforms” provides with an extensive analysis of the connotations implied within online platforms. As intermediaries, platforms represent the conjunction of a multitude of factors, both in terms of the users’ creative expression, as well as the organizational stakeholders’ benefits. This is aligned with the democratization process expressed earlier as the main attribute of Web 2.0 practises. More specifically, in regards to democratization and openness, Gillespie marks four inherent characteristics of platforms, denoting its conceptual nature, bringing the “platform” metaphor into existence out of its literal meanings: A platform is (a) computational, following the rules of coding and decoding, letting one to develop upon preexisting material, and draw inspiration for novelty, (b) political, as an open “space” for dialogue and communication exchange by various means, (c) figurative, in terms of opening a metaphysical interval between current states and possibilities of action, and (d) architectural for the users’ ability to build on a specific structure dedicated to one out of many scopes. These four attributes bond together in the concept of an online platform, and as Gillespie argues, the overall conception “fits neatly with the long-standing rhetoric about the democratizing potential of the Internet. And it very much aligns with the more recent enthusiasm for user-generated content (UGC), amateur expertise, popular creativity, peer-level social networking, and robust public commentary” (Benkler, 2006; Bruns, 2008; Burgess, 2007; Jenkins, 2006, in Gillespie, 2010). Within the political aspects of platforms, Gillespie emphasizes on the strategical role of platforms for the distribution and marketing of goods and further services (a topic we investigate thoroughly later as means to museological communication strategies), but he is nevertheless cautious, based on the very fluid consistency of the structure of platforms, allowing for a respective degree of autonomy for the user:

“Whatever possible tension there is between being a platform for empowering individual users and being a robust marketing platform and being a platform for major studio content is elided in the versatility of the term and the powerful appeal of the notion behind it. And, when it comes to avoiding liability for whatever copyright infringing clip or pornography or obscenity that users choose to post, the term becomes a valuable and persuasive token in legal environments, positing their service in a familiar metaphoric framework – merely the neutral provision of content, a vehicle for art rather than its producer or patron – and liability should fall to the users themselves” (Gillespie, 2010).

Synopsizing, a platform is bearing characteristics a user may relate to in terms of media circulation preferences, online activities, and means of information and communication

- 18 - services. It stems from, complies with, and further promotes the overall Web 2.0 philosophy, and becomes an open space for the exchange of informational or material resources. Users are aware of the platforms’ constant availability through the “everyware” status of their smart devices, and of their openness for hosting a broadly understood sense of “public dialogue.” We will now specify the type of platforms of interest within the sphere of microblogs.

2.4.2 Microblogging: Theoretical Description and Empirical Presentation of Three Key Platforms

We have now understood the overall Web 2.0 climate as expressed by blogging platforms. We now need to comprehend what is the Web 2.0’s impact on the visual field, which, as we are going to see later, has a dramatic effect on visual perception in general, including the museum experience as a visual narrative. This subchapter concludes to the key theme of our examination, namely the IBMPs, including their theoretical speculation, and description of the features of three representative IBMPs, followed by a specific example aiming at the clear understanding of their functions. This way, we will be able to further explore and comprehend IBMPs’ nature and test the validity of our hypothesis. Weblogs (or blogs, for simple) are defined as “frequently modified web pages in which dated entries are listed in reverse chronological sequence” (Herring et. al., 2005, p. 142-143). The term was coined in 1997, and since 1999, “blogging” has been an increasing online activity (ibid.). Since its early beginning, blogging drew the attention of scholarship for its richness in means of expression, its versatility, and multitude of contents. “Blogging is an unusually versatile medium, employed for everything from spontaneous release of emotion to archivable support of group collaboration and community” (Nardi, et. al., 2004). Its intense popularity has led to the appreciation of the blogging format as a separate and stabilized genre, following Yates & Orlikowski (1992) in their approach for studying organizational communication media. However, the rapid development of popularized web formats and genres has led to a rather detailed categorization of sub-genres of blogs, and their subsequent stabilization: “the stabilization of the blog as format (or medium) has enabled the emergence of a variety of genres” (Miller & Shepherd, 2009 in Siles, 2011). Several blogging services offer a variety of blogging platforms, distinct from each other, due to their interface, customization possibilities, and/or emphasis on different types of expression (text, image, video, combination, etc.). Some notable examples of distinct blogging services are the ones provided by Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, or Tumblr.com, each one being unique in its

- 19 - offerings, inviting users to decide which one benefits better the type of material they need to communicate.

In the present research, we are interested in “microblogging,” a blogging sub-genre, differentiated in its brief nature of updatedness, quick annotations style, related to a need for faster communication (Ebner & Schiefner, 2008, p. 156, Java et. al., 2007, p. 56), and more particularly in image-based or pictorial microblogging. Image-based microblogging is, as the term denotes, quickly updated blogging with pictures as its basic content. Baer (2014) notes a shift in the way information is presented, from text-based to image-based. Not only image-based websites have become more and more successful, but also other social media have been increasingly infiltrated by images (ibid.). Social microblogging platforms, like Tumblr (www.tumblr.com), Instagram (www.instagram.com), and Pinterest (www.pinterest.com), are currently “rising to the top of social media channels” (Thomas, 2012, p. 321). Compared to text-centered platforms like emails, tweets, status updates, or notifications, visual microblogging services offer a rich experience for information seeking and sharing, as well as for online communication and acquaintance representation. Thomas argues that in the vast amounts of text-based communication, important details “are easily lost in the deluge,” and that the popularity of visual microblogging form is justified due to the very potency of images: "photographs tell a story and illustrate an experience more profoundly than words alone [...] an attractive, compelling image offers background, narrative, and conclusion all at a moment's glance, delivering information, efficiency, and satisfaction to the viewer" (2012, p. 321). An important reference should be given to the fact that several users may not consider image-based platforms as microblogging ones, hence discriminate between Tumblr as a microblogging service, and Instagram and Pinterest as image-based platforms. We disagree with such a position, due to the vague nature of all three media, which are all open to text captions, with different restrictions, nevertheless. In any event, Instagram and Pinterest may be understood as microblogging platforms, and we treat them as such. Last, but not least, the IBMPs we examine are all mobile-friendly - a crucial factor for their decisive popularity has been their mobile application version (that for some has been their initial form) - as long as one may use them as a function of a smartphone being anywhere, given an internet connection. The key argument extracted from the mobility of these IBMPs, is that users consider them as an inseparable member of their customary portable tools, like their bags, cellphones, or cameras that can be used at

- 20 - any time, and hence, their operational characteristics play a significant role in how they perceive images.

Keeping up with the definition of platforms, each of the aforementioned microblogging services is an IBMP, given the differentials constituting their uniqueness and appreciability of one platform over another depending on the user’s purpose or aesthetics. In the following chapters, we present the basic characteristics of these three popular IBMPs together with related statistics and contrasted features, as well as the respective terminology that was developed for each platform’s operations. Their rapidly acquired popularity among other pictorial platforms, was the basic criterion of choice for them as representative examples on the further scope of this paper. After juxtaposing descriptions for each platform in order to gain a satisfactory overview of their elements together with quantitative data that express their popularity, we also provide with some qualitative data of users’ personal experiences, explaining their reasons of preference. The opinions presented derive from research conducted on visual artists’ opinion on those IBMPs, and are considered relevant as they express a direct feeling of users being engaged with the visual field which interests us. It’s important to underline here that by presenting the three platforms we have no intention of comparison. Our aim is the opposite, a multiple verification of the IBMPs general characteristics expressed, and a solid common ground for developing our arguments afterwards. As the reader will see, the three platforms bear actually very similar characteristics and their differentials are almost insignificant for the context of our study. In order to avoid mere theoretical presentation of the platforms, we provide with an empirical example of the actual usage of each platform in order to to acquire some practical data to build upon our hypothesis. Our methodological tools which will be employed afterwards will then be enriched with raw source material for analyzing IBMPs beyond their description.

We already mentioned that we present the three platforms without attempting to compare them in terms of efficiency, interface, usability etc., but only in order to exemplify their environments and render them familiarized to the reader. To limit our example within a relatively controlled context of associations, we tested each platform’s search engine and usability by a specified category of images; namely we used as a keyword the name and surname of the Japanese photographer Shomei Tomatsu (1930-2012). We intended to find an example related to visual culture for discussing the user’s perception of a traditional “image” in an image-saturated age, where everyone becomes an image generator and

- 21 - processor, hence the works of an artist would suffice. We, then, prefered a certain artist over a certain work of art for obtaining various types of pictorial results (as it is shown below). Realistic photography was preferred to other forms of visual expression (painting, video) due to its closeness to reality that, we assume, should provoke desire for interplay on behalf of the IBMP and portable camera users for generating images of images, comments on contents, self-portraits in realistic backgrounds, and the like. Apart from that, choosing to use representations of pictorial material which is usually related with museological environments, since Tomatsu’s pictures are usually displayed in exhibitions, sets the example closer to the museum/IBMP analogy we wish to further elaborate on.

A multitude of factors justifies the specificity of the choice. Initially, we intended to use results that are numerically comprehensible by a human agent, that is, we wanted to ensure that the results would be easily countable and processed, in order to gain an experience satisfactorily interpreted in terms of “what one sees,” and “how one interprets and shares.” Those two combined are what we designate as “what one perceives” of an image. The explanation provided above regarding the controllability of the case study, advocates our intention to test our hypothesis of the IBMPs’ contents and algorithms impact on the user’s perception of images. We have chosen to use a common query for each IBMP to get a clear view of the form of visual representation a user gets accustomed to by using them in daily basis. It is noteworthy, though, that the three IBMPs do not base the user’s representation on a social media kind of “profile,” but instead they focus on the user’s constant expression via regular contact with the website. Hence, it is of very little use to speculate IBMP uploaders’ profiles in order to extract meaningful observations, since the available information is non-reflective of the user’s personality. The whole structure of this research could follow a completely different route if the IBMPs offered more specialized information about their users, such as geographic or cultural elements. The fact that they don’t, invites sole conceptual analysis instead of geographical and cultural statistics comparison.

In fact, most of the users provide occasionally, even rarely, with very few personal data as age, place of origin, and thumbnail-sized avatar image. Hence, we decided to focus on the topic’s specificity and delve mostly into the medium and not the user’s circumstances. Therefore, we chose to consider a topic too specific in order to assume a visiting user or an uploader has some interest on this topic, and simultaneously broad enough to have a satisfactory amount of returned results to apply and verify the theories employed below.

- 22 -

Even if this might sound problematic in the case of an experiment, having made too many assumptions, our intention is to offer a simple exemplifying case study for the possibly unaccustomed reader to comprehend the nature of IBMPs’ functionality. Another difficulty was located in the question of which artist to select and why. Our objective was to control the experiment’s variables, in the sense of us being able to grasp the available contents in their entirety and reflect confidently on their contents and sources. We, thus, preferred to base our experiment on Shomei Tomatsu, “one of the most important post-war Japanese photographers.” (Clark, 2005, p. 387), distinct enough but not too popular a topic for returning a controllable amount of examined results, yet illustrative enough of the IBMPs characteristics, and rich in content in order to motivate the next chapter’s main conceptual discussion. It is evident among users of IBMPs that popular themes most probably are equally represented in all three platforms, while the amount of entries is vast enough to render the results inexhaustible for sense-making humans. By literally being able to count the results, we acquired a wide image of what is being represented and how, so that we may reflect on the hypothetical states of perception and perspective, leading users to share the available material. Hence, we discarded “classic” artists from before the second half of the twentieth century, whose entries would be very far from control, thus hard to interpret. Still, too narrow a search was also dismissed as an option, in order to avoid a small amount of entries that wouldn’t allow further analysis based on the IBMPs characteristics.

As we are about to see, the resulting subjects were gallery exhibitions, captured interaction of users with the artefacts, and further objects related to his work - a satisfactory set of subjects for expressing a diversity of reactions based on the shift of image perception we examine. We limit the example to the results of one keyword -the full name of the artist- for avoiding the complexity of multiple keywords (hashtags, wherever applicable) comparison and often ambiguity (for instance, his sole surname - which is very common in Japan - may return vast amounts of irrelative results, or extra keywords such as “painting” may minimize results to undesired degrees). After justifying the reasons leading to the decision of this specific exemplar topic, we may now present the three most popular IBMPs. The case study was conducted on November 26th, 2015. a. Tumblr

- 23 -

Founded February 2007, having 352 employees by the time writing, Tumblr describes itself as “a global platform for creativity and self-expression” that “celebrates creativity.” As the administrators state on the website’s “info” section, “[w]e want you to express yourself freely and use Tumblr to reflect who you are, and what you love, think, and stand for.” Tumblr has become well-known for its simplicity of registration - a username and a password are the only things required for an account’s establishment. Preconfigured themes are to be chosen for an account’s appearance, and right after their registration, users are invited to post their contents, follow other users’ material and also reblog other users’ blogs on their dashboard (Taylor, 2013, p. 18-19). In contrast to the other platforms we examine, Tumblr is rather inviting for all possible types of media (video, audio, text), and not only images. Yet, due to the pictorial medium’s prevalence within the platform, for the scope of this paper we treat it as an IBMP: “Yahoo’s Tumblr isn’t a platform that you immediately associate with great visuals, but the platform has user numbers in the hundreds of millions and up to 50% of posts are images and gifs” (Redick, 2015). Social Networking in Tumblr is unidirectional, that is, one’s “follow” does not require the “followed” party’s confirmation in order to establish a connection, thus it is differentiated from other social networks like Facebook that demand mutuality in connections (Chang, et. al., 2014, p. 2). Tumblr allows users to retrieve content by the utilization of tags (Taylor, 2013, p. 26), short descriptive means of folksonomic categorizations, under which one may obtain desired content. Comparing research available online on Tumblr popularity, the amount of users has increased from 166.4 million users in January 2014 to approximately 420 million in April 2014, and from 73.4 billion posts to a total of 99 billion respectively. A later research counts 217 million blogs, and an average of 113.6 million posts per day (Chang, et. al., 2014, p. 2, Smith, 2015a), while through Tumblr’s press page, we get the latest statistics of 124.9 billion posts, 266.4 billion blogs and 16 available languages.

As it seems though, experience has shown that Tumblr’s folksonomy in the everyday life of its users doesn’t represent an organic attribute of the platform, since users tend to prefer experimental and random approaches to their newsfeed’s various recommendations: “Giant’s Stovall sees the opportunity of Tumblr as an experimental platform for visual artists: ‘You can post anything you want there. The hashtagging doesn’t seem to do much and I have no idea of anyone ever sees anything. I find a lot of super cool art there’” (Redick, 2015). A counter-benefit of Tumblr, on the other hand, is the impossibility of dialogue and conversation under a post. While users have the opportunity to comment on a post, the user

- 24 - responsible for the post is unable to reply directly back to the commentator, and would have to either communicate commentators via personal email, or comment on one of the other party’s posts (Taylor, 2013, p. 26-27). The following screenshot is representative of Tumblr’s digital environment. Some remarks on the contents and contexts of our example are found below.

The query keyword for Tumblr was “shomei tomatsu.” While Tumblr doesn’t provide with the exact amount of results, we have approximately measured them to be circa 750. After 2013, it is possible to apply three filters for the displacement of Tumblr results for each search: “all posts,” or “most popular,” and “showing [or not showing] adult oriented content.” We applied the “all posts” filter, combined with the “showing adult oriented content” in order to maximize the number of results. Tumblr begins by presenting the related blogs followed by the images and blogposts in a mixed manner. Only one blog was available for our query, quite irrelevant with the keyword, yet related to photography in general. After examining the contents of the resulting images, we came into categorizing them based on the uploaders’ intentions, interpreting the potential investigating user’s

- 25 - reflection upon them. This categorization practice is maintained in the examination of the following two IBMPs (Pinterest and Instagram) for comprehending each platform’s image characteristics-audiences relation, and for a further understanding of the modes of thinking being activated within the contemporary treatment of image culture. Pictures could be classified in several basic categories and we briefly describe them here, except for cases where more detailed elaboration is required. In order of appearance, we categorised the returned results as follows:

 The artist’s works, photographed by individual users in an “official” manner, cropped by the limits of the original frames. The majority of uploaders did not include any further points of reference, as the place where the picture was shot, the exhibition, etc.  Pictures and short videos revealing the contexts of galleries and exhibitions hosting his work, partially (for instance, two of his works displayed next to each other, obviously as parts of an exhibition) or wholly (pictures of the exhibition space, where an interested user may deduct that it’s an exhibition of the artist).  Pictures of the artist’s printed publications, exhibition catalogues, and other related printed material about photography with his work included.  Original artistic photo-shootings inspired by his work. Especially in Tumblr (and as shown below, in Pinterest too) a series of photos that appear are photographical reproductions of his themes made out of Play-Doh modelling compound.  Intensively manipulated versions of his works edited by third-party software, thus representing a hybrid kind of artistic documentation and original expression. The works’ initial sourcing is stated in a respective amount of cases, but not in all of them.  Photographic reproductions of his works together with some short text (his or others’) relevant to the content of each work.  Pictorial versions of short quotations of the artist, with or without any further pictorial elements. One may encounter a simple quotation written on a single colored background, or displaced next to a related work of his.  The artist’s portraits.  Photographs or scans of publications regarding him or his work from various printed sources, like newspapers, journals etc.

- 26 -

 Some of the results are actually complete sets of several pictures, of an album- collection kind, often used as tools for comparative studies between him and other photographers of similar style, age, and country.  A rather small amount of self-portraits (informally called “selfies”) of exhibition attendants posing in front of one of his works, or next to his publications. A respective amount of them are expressing humorous connotations.  A small amount of totally irrelevant images.

Some critical comments on Tumblr’s offerings should be allowed here. As shown, Tumblr was rather rich in its multitude of diverse kinds of related images. Several rare artworks not found in the other two IBMPs appear in Tumblr. The captions accompanying the texts very often imitate the form of museum labels. From the last two observations we may declare Tumblr users’ behavior being more “professional”, “sophisticated” and “dedicated” to the details. However, we also observed a general tendency of preference for black and white pictures, while the other two platforms return equal percentages of colored and black and white images (the photographer has produced artworks belonging to both image types). Also, the number of returned posts may seem larger than the other platforms’, but several of the posts were reblogged versions of the same original uploaded content. A very important element in using Tumblr’s search engine is its emphasized tendency in keeping the user within the mosaic-like page of the results. While, for instance, Google’s search engine aims at linking users to other websites, escaping the search engine’s environment as quickly as possible, Tumblr’s result page seems as the end of the search, since if one clicks on an image, they will not be directed to any other page, but remain within the mosaic, having the inspected image magnified. Even if such an intention is not declared in Tumblr’s policies, it is obvious to us that it emphasizes on a curated projection of available contents. The similarity of design with the other two platforms, though, lets us hypothesize that if such an emphasis on the curatorial expression is perceived from Tumblr users, then the same will be applied for the other IBMPs as well. Users perceive returned entries as sets to be processed by a “scrolling down” gesture, instead of analytical speculation. b. Pinterest

Founded in March 2010, with more than 500 employees, according to the website’s information, “Pinterest is a visual bookmarking tool that helps you discover and save

- 27 - creative ideas. Our mission is to help people discover the things they love, and inspire them to go do those things in their daily lives. We’re building the world’s first and biggest discovery engine” On a constant upswing, Pinterest popularity grows enormously: from 70 million users in April 2014, by September 2015, 100 million users have been registered, 23% of which are using Pinterest daily (Baer, 2014, Smith, 2015b), while by March 2015, Pinterest claimed to have more than 50 billion “pins of items” on more than a billion “boards” (Novet, 2015), with its attraction counted to be 2.5 billion monthly page views (Baer, 2014). Currently, Pinterest is available in 30 languages. Hansen. Nowlan & Winter offer a brief and inclusive description of all the Pinterest operations:

“Pinterest functions as a digital pinboard. It lets users post images and videos from the internet — either while viewing a website or by using a URL — and add user-created photos, both of which are referred to as pinning. Pinterest provides a bookmarklet script (a downloadable "pin this" button users can add to their browsers) that allows users to pin virtually any image or video found on the Internet. An image or video is referred to as a pin and is organized onto categorized user-created boards. Users can add a description of up to 500 characters to a pin. Already existing pins can be added to a user's board, referred to as repinning. One can also use a heart icon to like a pin and can add comments below the description” (Hansen, Nowlan & Winter, 2012)

In addition, and in contrast to Tumblr’s customizable themes, emphasis is given to Pinterest’s standard and unchangeable interface, providing an overall uniformity in its digital environment (Taylor, 2013, p. 25). Furthermore, in terms of content, Pinterest is more specific in its categorization policy, in contrast to the aforementioned randomness of Tumblr: “pinboards can range in topic from places the user wants to travel, to recipes they like, to products they want to buy” (Baer, 2014). As Mittal et. al. claim, “the most common topics across users, and pins were design, fashion, photography, food, and travel” (2013, p. 2). While Tumblr is currently offering a rather “chaotic,” customizable in its interface, environment characterized by randomness, and thus appreciated by artists that are in need of new inspiration, Pinterest appears strict in its classifications, uniformity of interface, and exactness in retrieval. Furthermore, Pinterest’s uniformity constitutes it ideal for managing and curating images, more than circulating original work - as it is found, “[l]ess than 5% of all images on Pinterest are uploaded by users; over 95% are pinned from pre-existing web sources” (ibid.). However, contrary to Tumblr, Pinterest allows for dialogue between users as one-on-one conversations taking place under the website’s “pins” (Taylor, 2013, p. 26-27),

- 28 - and this probably justifies its preference over Tumblr for some visual artists, emphasizing on the communicational aspect of the medium:

“Creative director Jana Seitzer of Geek Girl Digital (also know by the alias Merlot Mommy) says that Pinterest and Instagram are possibly the strongest platforms to communicate visually:

‘We connect emotionally to visual content more so than text. The emotional connection is a benefit for photographers, since people will make decisions and take actions more quickly when prompted by visual content on social media…. great images can often communicate more effectively than words; that’s powerful. Social networks such as Instagram and Pinterest are very strong for good visuals.’ (Redick, 2015).

Derived from qualitative interviewing of Pinterest users, Zarro, Hall & Forte, categorize the main activities on Pinterest in order of popularity as: a. collecting, b. discovering, c. collaborating, d. publishing (2013, p. 653-654). We may have an empirical view about these categorizations by the following brief presentation.

The keyword used for Pinterest was, again, “shomei tomatsu.” Pinterest’s system begins by categorizing the results into four broad categories that may bring results relevant to the query, more specifically, “users” (in the case there are users by the name used as a keyword- none among our results), “your pins” (if the user has saved any pins adding this keyword to them - once again, none in our search), “all pins” (as shown in Pinterest description above- 450 results approximately in our search), and “pinboards” (collections of “pins”- 110 results

- 29 - approximately). Below the results, Pinterest offers suggested related tags for specifying the research - in our example, we were suggested to use “tokyo” and “photography,”among others, something we didn’t do in order to keep the maximum amount of results. The categories of returned “pins” were:

 Photographic reproductions of works presented in an “official” manner.  Books and publications of his.  The artist’s portraits.  Original artistic photo-shootings inspired by his work, together with the aforementioned Play-Doh compound “remakes.”  Relevant works of art tagged by the name of the artist, but however not of his responsibility of production.  Quite a respective amount of completely irrelevant material.

It is obvious that Pinterest returned a very limited amount of categories, with even less richness due to the amount of irrelevant images. An important “missing” element is the one of verbal or gestural interplaying commenting on images, either by posing in front of works, or by text comments inscribed upon the images. An important advantage that should be emphasized is the - similar to Tumblr’s - mosaic-like display of results, which can one by one be inspected, but in addition to Tumblr’s sole inspection, Pinterest offers more. By one click on an image, the user may inspect the item and be informed about its context, comment on it and find “related pins”. By clicking twice on an partition of an already magnified image, the user gets the option to navigate among other images which are related by visual semantic content (colors, representations, schemes, etc.).

A note should be given to the pinboards as well. Of all the results, the majority was titled with the artist’s full name and the exceptions were very few. We categorized them according to four types of contents - the first three are roughly equally distributed within the results and the last one is unique in its kind:

- 30 -

 Boards including photographic reproductions of his work.  Boards containing photographic reproductions of his work together with his publications’ book covers.  Boards including sets involving his and other Japanese photographers’ work.  A single pinboard including original artistic photo-shootings inspired by his work, all produced by a certain artist. c. Instagram

Founded in 2010, Instagram presents itself as a means to connect the world via images:

“Instagram is a reflection of our diverse community of cultures, ages, and beliefs. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the different points of view that create a safe and open environment for everyone.”

“Instagram has become the home for visual storytelling for everyone from celebrities, newsrooms and brands, to teens, musicians and anyone with a creative passion.” (Instagram, 2015)

Instagram’s growth is equally remarkable to the previously described websites. While 300 million users were counted in December 2014 (Baer 2014), as by November 2015, Instagram has, according to its website’s press section (http://instagram.com/press/) more than 400 million active users on monthly manner, more than 40 billion photos shared in total, with an average of 80 million photos uploaded daily. As Baer argues, “Instagram is like a Twitter for

- 31 - images,” and while the previous two IBMPs mobile versions are precisely only “versions,” in Instagram “users can only upload images to their profile via the mobile application, which encourages them to post live-action images” - there is a desktop version of Instagram, but users are not allowed to upload images through it (Baer, 2014). More specifically:

“Released exclusively for the iPhone on October 6, 2010, Instagram is a mobile location-based social network application that offers its users a way to take pictures, apply different manipulation tools (‘filters’) to transform the appearance of an image (for example: fade the image, adjust its contrast and tint, over or under-saturate colors, blur areas to exaggerate a shallow depth of field, add simulated film grain, etc.), and share it instantly with the user’s friends on the application itself or through other social networking sites such as Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, etc” (Hochman & Schwartz, 2012, p. 6).

While Instagram (uncountable, and with its initial capitalized) denotes the online platform, an instagram (countable, with lower-case initial) denotes “the compositional resources and concerns shaping the creation of the multi-layered presentations of images and texts” (Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius, 2013, p. 1843). In comparison to Pinterest, which has been found mostly to work for curating pre-existing sources, Instagram leans toward creative artists that want to share their novel work: “while Instagram is majorly for content creators, Pinterest is for curators, i.e people use Instagram to deliver the content, but Pinterest to share the content with public thereafter” (Mittal, et. al., 2013). Once again, Redick exemplifies visual artists’ appreciation for the medium:

“Photographer Leonard Carter of SureShot says that the appeal of a medium like Instagram is multifaceted. He says that IG can satisfy both personal and professional needs quite effectively:

‘Personally, my sharing isn’t always for the benefit of others. Sometimes I see my sharing as a sort of a digital time capsule. I enjoy seeing where I’ve been and what I was up to at a given point in the past. As an artist I’m able to view my technical and artistic maturation. As a businessman, I am trying to gain exposure for my business or current venture.’ [...]

Giant’s Stovall adds that easy embedding and active hashtags set Instagram apart as a visual platform:

‘I can make it show up on my website easily and the hashtagging makes it easy to get my photos in front of a lot of new viewers who otherwise wouldn’t see my images.’” (Redick, 2015)

- 32 -

Contrary to Tumblr, Instagram’s tagging feature appears to be extremely successful, while the instantaneous nature, renders it more spontaneous and lets one with the essence of a work in progress, more than Tumblr’s portfolio-like final works. We may now proceed to show how some results appear to the user, following our exemplary hashtag.

When typing “shomei tomatsu” in Instagram’s search box, the user encounters the suggestive unfolding of a list of available single-word existing hashtags, ordered automatically by a general popularity filter. We clicked on the first option, the “#shomeitomatsu” hashtag, returning 351 posts. The results are initially presented algorithmically as consonance between popularity and relevance - interestingness (of course, filtered in the totality of world-wide interestingness, and not based in relevance according to specific spatiotemporal contexts). In addition to this contextless popularity criterion, the user then has the option to navigate within the results after filtering them by date, from more to less recent.

- 33 -

The categories of the returned results- in order of appearance- were listed as follows:

 Photographic reproductions of the artist’s works in “official” manner.  Partial or whole presentation of exhibitions hosting works of the artist.  Original artistic photo-shootings aiming to photographically reconstruct anew Tomatsu’s pictures, inspired by the latter, or, coordinated with Tomatsu’s style, generating new pictures following his “style” (the Japaneseness, Americanization of Japan, victimization, etc.), according to their subjective interpretation of it.  Books and publications of his.  Self-portraits in front of his works.  Non-exhibitional spaces, private or public, where reproductions of his photographic works are displaced as elements of internal decoration.  Inanimate subject matter (Still Life) compositions including relevant material (for instance, one of his published books photographed next to a cup of coffee).  Intensively manipulated versions of his works through software.  Short blog entries with Tomatsu’s quotations appearing in the same size with images, yet being uploaded in pure text form and not rendered as image files as in the case of Tumblr.  Among the results, one finally encounters “collages” of images, possible combinations of all the aforementioned categories, automatically generated by a certain Instagram application after user request. We notice that the results of Instagram are quite diverse and numerous. The user has also the possibility by clicking on each one of the images to magnify it and discover the account by which the image was uploaded. Besides, the element of the mosaic-like interface and the encouragement of the “scroll- down” gesture seem to be prevalent during the search experience using this platform too.

2.4.3 IBMPs Demographics

Of interest could be the demographics available for the three platforms, as collected by Pew Research Center, and compared in Duggan (2015). As it is has been already discussed, the three platforms do not emphasize on the user’s detailed profile as it happens with other social media. The majority of the available profiles are poor in content regarding personal interests, occupation, or education. The present demographics reflect the results of a survey

- 34 -

“based on telephone interviews conducted March 17, 2015 through April 12, 2015 among a national sample of 1,907 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia” (ibid.). Given that IBMPs’ official demographics are not publicly available, we cannot base our further analysis of them on such criteria of association. The present results may be of use for a more clear illustration of the platforms’ audience in the US - representative to a respective extent, but too specific as a target group, and too general in terms of types of data. By no means we can extract any considerable conclusions out of such data in regards to visual perception of any theme. Thus, the present short chapter serves as an indicative addition to the picture of the three IBMPs popularity, but will not serve as a point of reference in our later examination.

2.5 Communicating Images via IBMPs in the Context of the Museum

We have now clearly demonstrated IBMPs’ operational features and offered examples in the form of a case study for understanding their functionality. The present subchapter serves as a primary bridging of IBMPs with the museum context and simultaneously exemplifies some basic indications on the way museum visitors treat the exhibits according to their reshaped visual perception, modified by the nature of IBMPs. The abundance of available choices and possibilities gives space for purpose-oriented and taste-driven preferences. Each IBMP may be prefered over another for several reasons, according to each platform’s unique features

- 35 - delivered above. Based on the platforms’ services and the availability of smart technology, users are able to rearrange their visual stimuli in various ways:

“Images can be associated and re-associated, even those from different photographers, places and times, creating new collections, sequences and juxtapositions and hence new meanings. Images may also be combined with text, sound and other media; and digitally altered, creating a wide variety of new products and meanings.” (Van House, 2011, p. 129)

This chapter’s description of the user-platform relation, draws on the relevant presentation of Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ (2013) remarks on the Instagram users’ activities on communicating their experiences, as their findings provide with fruitful associations that can thereafter be interpreted within our methodological framework. What Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius did, was an extensive analysis on how users communicate the contents of a museum through Instagram, based on qualitative research upon museum visitors being Instagram users. Their initial finding was that every user had a set of prior considerations or concerns that had to be “balanced” before they portrayed a photographic subject. The three compositional concerns where “what to portray (the photographic subject), how to portray it (using features of the technology), and how to present it through captions” (ibid.). After the concerns have been balanced and the picture is taken, Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius describe the further two steps on image communication strategies, namely their management and curation within collections represented online, the action of a leading “cover page” image, and the mobilization of IBMP tools for engaging with further online audiences. These compositional criteria and the communicating methods of Instagrammers can be similarly observed, if slightly differentiated in terms of interface technology, at the other two groups of IBMP users’ behavioral patterns as well. The next subchapters elaborate briefly on those factors and how they may apply via the three IBMPs. Our central hypothesis is afterwards schematized as a complementary addition to Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ focus of interest on human concerns and strategies. The authors emphasize more on the human side of the user-IBMP relation of agency, a point of view we wish to support, after criticizing suggestions prioritizing non-human elements as equally determining factors of the process.

2.5.1 The Impact of IBMPs on User Pictorial Behavior

- 36 -

Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius, (2013) after interviewing Instagram users have concluded that image generation within that platform is the result of certain behavioral patterns observed in the user-platform interaction for communicating captured experiences. These patterns can be divided into two sets, (a) the compositional concerns which determine the photographic process prior to the picture’s online publication, and (b) the strategies of dissemination followed after the picture has been published.

The compositional concerns users have before shooting and sharing pictures include their subject choice, application of their aesthetics, and the picture’s complementary caption. These concerns are associated with one’s tripartite elaboration on how the shared picture will best reflect one’s personality. Most likely the foundation of every photographic gesture, the subject of interest motivates the action: “When our instagrammers talked about the subject they chose for an instagram, they often described it as having exceptional characteristics” (Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius, 2013). To choose what will be captured (this over the other) is a first step for expressing one’s personal taste in photography. Aesthetics is the second one, inasfar as a certain subject might have already been “captured” by others, so that identity can be expressed by a personal “touch” in the picture before its circulation. Van House under similar interviewing processes, focusing on image dissemination through Facebook and Flickr (2011, p. 129-132), offers similar observations:

“Many felt that images were more ‘real’ than text. Some commented on their efficiency: faster and easier to both post and absorb than text [...] Many of them used multiple social networking sites (in our interviews, Flickr and Facebook) to posted [sic] different images according to the expected audience and the norms of each site [...] many treated their online images as expressions of their viewpoint and aesthetics” (p. 131)

As explained, Instagram offers fixed photographic filters one may apply before uploading - however, Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius observe that users with a special taste in aesthetics preferred to edit their pictures in third party software prior to the upload. Thus, they believe to achieve pictorial outcomes reflecting their identity (ibid.). Regardless of their study’s focus on Instagram, there is no reason at all to negate the existence of the aesthetic concern in other IBMPs too. As we already saw, artists tend to adequately prefer Tumblr and Pinterest for promoting their works. What thirdly concerns users when expressing their identities through IBMPs is the decision of an appropriate accompanying caption. By adding a verbal comment, users are able to narrow the many interpretations to which an image

- 37 - may be ascribed and point to certain direction of understanding. Verbal captions can be added both as copyable text “next” or “under” the image, or even as an inclusion within the frame (as in cases of internet “memes” or digital blueprints). Whether humorous and distorting from the image’s original context, or “serving to situate the instagrams within the local cultural context,” captions are vital additives to pictorial self-expression: “The caption was particularly important in the composition of the instagram [...] adding an extra dimension to the interpretation of the photo,” Once again, there is no reason in particular for attributing this aspect solely to Instagram, inasfar as Pinterest allows for similar captions, while Tumblr’s more traditional blog-like features allows for unlimited text.

Dissemination strategies can be seen as the main curatorial practice exercised by the user. After balancing their compositional concerns and capturing their experiences, users intend to enroll the proper means to diffuse the shots. These are related to (a) the role of “cover pages,” (b) the categorization and grouping of pictures, and (c) the way the decision of shooting and sharing pictures resonates with existent or potential online audiences. “Cover pages” is the observed phenomenon of an initial picture serving as a context establisher for the sequence of following images that will be taken and presented: “In some instances, instagram stories are framed very clearly by an initial instagram that sets the scene for those that follow in much the same way that a cover page does for a storybook” (ibid.). In other words, if a user may perceive a certain photo-shooting session as somehow separate from another, then the first picture taken will guide the sequence of the next ones. This process implies a well-thought subject choice concern. “Cover pages” are not unique within Instagram users - it’s a behavior found diachronically in photo-sessions, even before the digital age. Users tend to share their pictures as sets of categorized themes. They often invent their categories and to keep themselves motivated for taking more pictures, they playfully explore environments and even“wait for the right type of object to appear so it can be included in their emerging collection” (ibid.). Both Tumblr and Pinterest offer a great number of grouping possibilities. The appeal to online audiences is perhaps the most crucial factor of impact during the sharing process. People post pictures in order for others to see them. The audience’s reception of the self through a shared image (and, thus, the potential reception of an image not-yet-uploaded) becomes a crucial factor for self-determination and motivation. “Feedback from her [an interviewee] online audience is taken into account in the creation of her subsequent instagrams. In this way, the instagram process is highly social and dynamic, as it offers the possibility to communicate with both ‘broad global reach as

- 38 - well as with personal intimacy’” (ibid.). One is what others believe one is, reflected in the available offered images. Thus, negative critique or negligence for shared material result in different strategies for both shooting and sharing pictures. Similarly, a celebrated reception of material invites the user to keep applying the same tactics. Social (hash)tagging, apparent in all three popular IBMPs, together with groupings of pictures and user “following” are the most common ways of engaging with online IBMP audiences.

Some noteworthy external elements affecting the shooting and sharing process, unmentioned in Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ article may also include the following: (a) Internet connectivity: A user’s mood for sharing a picture may shift if s/he has the possibility to upload instantly or not (b) Device autonomy and memory capacity: obviously, if a user is conscious of the smart device’s battery near-exhaustion, or the memory’s limited availability of space, may be rather fastidious on the number of pictures taken and shared. (c) Computational algorithms which may influence the transmission of content as desired. These factors may differentiate the course of image generation and reception, and we have reasons to suggest that these non-human factors should be taken under examination, alongside with the power of image in itself. By describing the Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ assertions, we have demonstrated the behavioral factors which determine the relation of IBMPs’ users with visual objects and optical stimuli in their identity construction process. Furthermore, a rather empirical side of the Museum 2.0 is proven to validate Web 2.0’s prospects within the museum context: IBMPs allow the user/visitor to playfully interact with the contents of an exhibition: instead of being a passive receiver of documented heritage, the visitor now interacts with the exhibits through the usage of IBMPs, acquiring the feeling of a personal experience related to identity structuring. The next subchapter is the formulation of our working hypothesis, based upon this paragraph’s objections.

2.5.2 IBMPs as Agents of Impact: the Non-Human Agency Hypothesis and its Implications

In the first chapter of our research we have scaled the historical and sociotechnical factors that gave birth to IBMPs, those generic forms of online social media that emphasize on pictorial expression and communication. Deriving from a long tradition of Web 2.0 and open internet practices, their indubitable popularity is justified by the directness of information exchange, ease of use, pictorial prevalence over text-centered civilizations, low or zero cost, and participatory nature. Their mobility, as smartphone applications, renders them portable

- 39 - technologies available anywhere and anytime for anyone, thus becoming inseparable if not integral components of today’s technical gear. Three of them, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, were presented and contrasted for being the most popular, exemplar of the IBMP genre. Ultimately, we examined the concerns lying before and some strategies applying after the generation of images on behalf of the users/visitors.

What we try to address is the impact that IBMPs have on visual perception, and unfortunately, the available literature dealing especially with IBMPs proves to be insufficient to answer that question in terms of emphasis on the non-human factor - which we consider crucial. Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ inclusive article was the closest to describe the user-IBMP interaction, however, their focal point was directed mostly to the user, the human part of the equation. Their accounts are insightful for how users treat IBMPs, but unsatisfactory as to what effects IBMPs have on the users. Observational experience of IBMPs has led us to suggest that the user-IBMP interaction does not lean solely to human agency, but we need to inspect the further significance of non-human factors. As we hypothesize, emphasis on non-human factors, things that escape human’s direct control, should lead to fruitful conclusions regarding the reshaping of users’ visual perception after the emergence of IBMPs. This should have a tremendous impact on the users/visitors’ visual perception and therefore their experience in the museum according to the following argument: as long as humans become accustomed in carrying mobile exhibitions of degraded value subjected to constant renewal by a scroll-down gesture, their behavior might be expected to change accordingly in the museum. If one’s available time for visiting a museum is limited, and he or she is accustomed to rapidly surpassing pictorial content within IBMPs, then most likely, he or she will follow a similar attitude while visiting a museum. The visitor will not stand in front of an exhibit for much longer time than the time spent in front of a status update appearing after a computational algorithm’s result. The next chapter presents the theoretical tools we employ for the further elaboration on our subject.

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CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL VIEWPOINTS AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK: NEW MEDIA AND THE EXHIBITIONAL APPROACH TO IBMPS IN THE RESHAPING OF THE MUSEUM

As Tzonos marks out, theoretical and applied museology are two branches that are quite difficult to become synthesized, and the theorization employed for approaching museological subjects should necessarily be derived from interdisciplinary fields, as a “patchwork” that will lead to an overall understanding of the museological subject (Tzonos, 2013, p. 64-65). Neatly, our methodology for treating our question consists of a combination of theories applied upon our everyday empirical observations, an instance of which has been manifested in our previous case study. In this chapter, we briefly present the employed theories and their relevance to the topic. We certainly discard any extreme stance in defense or against technology, aiming at a neutral stance towards the epistemology of technology in relation to perception (how it is) and not its ethics (how it ought to be). The typology of interaction whose outcomes we investigate cannot be approached by traditional means of conceptual and theoretical research. Our central hypothesis for visual perception, leading to the examination of IBMPs’ nature, is that curatorial operations originally ascribed to human authorities of expertise, are now supplementally located within automated non- human factors. Eventually, user perception of the visual is rather related to the randomness of the frequent bombardment of optical stimuli via IBMPs, than to the mediation of art gatekeepers defining the current pictorial “mainstream.” Due to ongoing technological and social advances, humans have greater, instant, access to pictorial contents, but at the same time they are less conscious of the inherent potential within the image’s properties.

We do not define this machinic version of curation as problematic, but however we suggest it should be studied, understood, and handled with special care by both the programming experts and the platform users, in order to acquire the best of the dynamics of the image- media-users-society-image cycle. Furthermore, the museologist should be well aware of these important changes imposed by the platforms for preparing the grounds of future museum exhibitions and policies appropriately. The contents, or variables, of our research can be subjected to analysis by means of various disciplines, approached and examined by their respective methodologies. Our hypothesis (chapter 1.3.2), includes non-human factors

- 41 - as computational algorithms, online platform interfaces and decontextualized representations awaiting semantization on behalf of the human user (as it is explained in 2.4). As Couldry puts it:

“If we consider media as a distinctive social process that links producers and audiences in a regular set of relationships for the production and consumption of meaning in particular time cycles across large territories, then the organization of those relationships, and particularly their asymmetries, must have consequences for how both media producers and audiences think about their possibilities of action.” (Couldry, 2008, p. 104)

Media studies, a field which examines the impact media have on human understanding, and the mirrored inscription upon media of human characteristics, is hereby considered the proper theoretical navigational interdisciplinary framework for the best grounding of our arguments. We employ the works of Marshall McLuhan and his theories on media as extensions of humans, alongside with Lev Manovich’s principles which constitute New Media. Those axioms will guide our further inspection of IBMPs’ impact on visual perception. After McLuhan and Manovich this chapter is finally offering Hogan’s “exhibitional approach” to platforms which we consider overlapping and useful for our methodological framework. Hogan’s theory which could bear connections to museological terms includes some highly considerable arguments regarding the impact of IBMPs, though his museological stance will be heavily criticized, as we are about to explain later.

3.1 McLuhan and the Medium’s Message

All IBMPs are by definition media, so our methodology seeks of approaches on how media affect humans, since we track the way IBMPs affect their users’ visual perception. Media, like all technological means, act upon humanity as perceptual shifters, to the extent that the dipole human-medium exists in a co-modifying relation. If such a prism is employed by the museologist, it should be obvious that museological practices should constantly follow up with current technological tendencies, dynamically. Twentieth century’s technological studies were marked by the influence of Marshall McLuhan’s media theory (McLuhan, 1994). His teachings can be synopsized in the following well-known theorizations:

- 42 -

The medium is the message. McLuhan’s seminal quotation, denotes the nature of the medium’s prioritization over its content (the “message”) delivered through it (1994, p. 7-21). The attributes of frequently used media affect human’s ontological and epistemological positions. The fact that internet is in use is more important than what is transmitted within it. The pictures IBMP users deliver through the platforms are not so important as the fact that they deliver pictures through the specific means. The nature of the medium is to be studied, since it has certain effects on its user’s way of thinking and self-understanding. Every medium is the container of another medium. The chain of technological in- betweenness is never ending: every object we perceive as a tool is included within a broader one and includes several others (ibid., p. 8): a house contains rooms, rooms contain wardrobes, wardrobes contain clothes, clothes contain pockets, pockets contain smartphones and money, ad infinitum. In our case, IBMPs cannot be studied as sole factors of impact. The pictorial medium (contained in IBMPs) is to be studied as well, together with the network as medium (containing the IBMPs). The containing and the contained media surrounding the one that interests us belong to our studying focus. Every medium is the extension of a human body faculty - Narcissus/Narcosis. The car is an extension of the foot, painting is an extension of the eye, computers are extensions of the nervous system (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). This property of media has a tremendous effect on the modification of the prior bodily faculties, which McLuhan summarizes in the “Narcissus/Narcosis” effect. As he explains, like Narcissus, humans are “shocked” (narcotized) recognizing their attributes’ “beauty” augmented on their reflections (narcissism) apparent on the media. Hence, the initial body faculties become anesthetized, and as in the case of narcotics, humans become addicted to their media (ibid., p. 41-46). People of our time are accustomed in the massive addiction to “selfies,” or “Insta(gram)moments.” Simply, it is the over-enthusiasm following any invention. After the technical aspect is stabilized, then the technology’s actual beneficial (or counter-beneficial) use is found - usually augmenting the previous state of humanity. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us. Media have a mirroring effect upon human societies (McLuhan in Culkin, 1967). The medium isn’t only the “message,” but as McLuhan paraphrased himself, “the medium is the massage” in our mass-age (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). Indeed, in IBMPs humans created a tool to effectively share their pictorial content. Nonetheless, the means becomes the purpose, and at the present point, platforms are used for the sake of the platform. We don’t “shoot pictures” anymore, but we “tumblr.” This is not by definition negative. Perhaps it ιs a sign of evolution.

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The above constitutes a McLuhanesque interpretation of our mediated technical universe. Porter, extensively analyzing the pictorial power’s impact on various kinds of public discourse after the advent of the internet, outlines McLuhan’s contribution to the field. She is referring to McLuhan via Neil Postman’s accounts on media’s re-defining potential for the users’ intelligence and wisdom by the structuring of “new forms of truth-telling” and Nicholas Carr’s reference to the Narcissus/Narcosis, as the simultaneous “broadening horizons while deepening detachment” process (Porter, 2013, p. 1769). The museum, being responsible for the cultural preservation and representation, should be the central point where the medium’s message becomes finally actualized and recognized.

However, for an in-depth analysis of contemporary media’s nature, McLuhanesque analysis doesn’t suffice, given the fact that it was developed half a century ago, before the extensive foundation of the digital world. Therefore, the following chapter introduces Manovich’s seminal continuation of media studies in the 20th century, more relevant to the digital age (ergo, IBMPs), rather than McLuhan’s “electric age.”

3.2 Lev Manovich, the Language of New Media and the Hybrid Transcoding Nature of Users, Platforms and Objects

“The medium is the message” is fully cogent when referring to the transition from telegraph to telephone, or from manuscript to printing press, but certainly not to the switch from laptop to tablet or from Flickr to Instagram. We need more detailed tools of analysis for understanding the nature of contemporary differentials of complexity of overlapping media like IBMPs, smartphones, or the Internet. Lev Manovich, founder of the New Media Theory discipline, collected and analyzed the special characteristics justifying the difference between “old” and new media, thus providing with an easily applied set of features to both recognize, analyze and describe novelty in media. Manovich’s “five principles” are the main body of his seminal work “the Language of the New Media” (2001). The title implies that to speak a language is to decode the meanings of the speaker’s codes. Understanding new media in terms of Manovichian analysis is to possess a strong decoding ability, enabling one to recode desired messages - and thus cope with our strongly codified society. Before the presentation of the principles, we should underline that Manovich clearly states that all principles do not necessarily apply in every new medium (2001, p. 27). Some media may

- 44 - obey only few, some may obey all principles. Nonetheless, the more principles obeyed by a medium under examination, the more “novel” it may be considered juxtaposed to traditional media. Contemporary IBMP users and potential museum visitors are subjected to this nature of media and digital objects. If we take into account McLuhan’s theory on the impact of media’s nature upon the users, the latter’s understanding of reality and of material objects becomes affected by the following five principles of new media: Numerical Representation: All new media objects are of digital form and hence are numerically and algorithmically represented. An object consists a single unity, naturally separated from any mental bondage to a creator, or organic bondage to its origination (p. 27-30). Modularity (or the “fractal structure of new media”): New media objects do not change their nature and identity when transferred in various contexts or modified for specific purposes. The ways a medium’s elements (which are media also) are combined, do not change the nature of the containing medium, nor their own (p. 30-31), except of when the deletion of operative parts is the case (p. 31). Automation: The result of (1) and (2) is automation, that appears in two versions: low-level (such as the auto-correction features in image and text editing software) and high-level (as in artificial intelligence projects). This axiom’s important element is the combination of increasing accessibility to media, developing together with the technological automation features (p. 32-36). Variability (also known as liquidity and mutability): Modularity and automation’s eventual consequence is new media’s ability to provide instantly with numerous different versions of the same object in contrast to the old media’s fixation to limited versions. Fixed and hard to copy prototypes are replaced by new media objects which may take different forms instantly (p. 36-45). As Manovich remarks (p. 41-42), variability signifies the passage from industrial mass consuming society to the postindustrial custom-made production of the individual - in agreement to the Web 2.0 principles. Transcoding: Some aspects of this principle were briefly discussed as McLuhan’s view of the media-society reshaping function. New media exist within the threshold of two encodings: the cultural codes (for instance, the human coding, as language and ethics) and computational codes (for instance, programming languages, software capabilities). New software capabilities and computer codes broaden the horizons of cultural expression, and by the same token, new cultural needs demand the development of computerization codes (p. 45-48). Perhaps, one of the museum’s future roles might be the capturing of this

- 45 - transcoding process as part of the cultural heritage, stemming from the human societies’ interaction with their digital technologies.

Some short remarks on the Manovichian principles applicability to IBMPs should be provided. Numerical representation of IBMP-mediated images means that each picture becomes a single unit, losing its bond to its creator, both in terms of property and origin of context. When uploaded, an image is copyable, editable and subjected to all sorts of interpretations. This “decontextualized” attribute is one of the key themes concerning our study. Knowledge about modularity familiarized the user’s mind with the idea that, in the digital world, their uploads are open to be copied, edited etc, without the deprivation of their personal relation to them. If I copy and reupload an edited version of a picture, I don’t “steal” the picture from the previous party, as it happens with analog media. Automation denotes the incapability of uploaders in having control over their material. As Van House puts it, “digital photographs have slipped the bounds of materiality and may have a life of their own outside the control of their makers” (2011, p. 128). Variability is observed in many levels of the digital images life-cycle, from the camera shooting the picture, to the photo- manipulation software and the IBMPs’ features. All of them allow for a multiplicity of automatically generated versions - the user can choose among a variety of options for saving the same picture. Some examples of variables: colored/selectively colored/black and white/other filter, JPEG/PNG/GIF/RAW encoding, high/medium/low/thumbnail size quality, etc. Finally, transcoding is one of the key theorizations used for this paper’s arguing on the IBMPs’ impact on image perception. Simply, image perception is understood as being modified (transcodified) by the transcoding tropes that visual representations of previous human experiences have already undertaken.

In the context of our example with Tomatsu, each image resulting from a query is “numerically represented,” that is, there are single unities - their sources may be available or not, but nonetheless, this plays an insignificant role as long as the user is interested for pure visual experiences moving around a certain concept. Several of the pictures found were, as shown, reblogged, or even multiply uploaded instances of the same image (even of the same copied file) from different uploaders. The resulting image, though, remains the “same,” no matter the modulation of sources or the difference in platform. As long as the image search has the form of “retrieval” - that is, a known or knowable item is implied, one knows at least approximately what they are looking for -, then the platform context becomes irrelevant. If

- 46 - the image is the one desired, its possible appearance in either Tumblr, Instagram, or Pinterest will make no difference (special preferences to platforms belong more to a study of interfaces aesthetics and architecture, beyond our scope). Thus, the “modularity” axiom also follows. Aspects of “automation” are apparent all over the fabric of this study: “pinboards” or “sets” of pictures serving a specific purpose on behalf of the uploader (for instance, studying tools), are automatically publicly available to any user that might appreciate their existence in ways differing significantly from the uploader’s original intentions. The many versions of manipulated works of Tomatsu, as well as the images inspired by his work stand for the verification of the “variability” axiom. Furthermore, as we are about to see in greater detail analyzing the other scholars’ arguments, the effect of “transcoding” is also strongly taking place. Human cultural codes of expression (verbal, non-verbal, postural, artistic) become encoded algorithmically in digital pictures, disseminating via semantic engines and returning results for concepts. Prior knowledge of this condition inspires humans to conceive new possible material to “feed” the encoding network and further interact with it in order to decode previously uploaded material. The three IBMPs examined, necessary bear the characteristics of Manovich’s new media, and this is a first step to understanding the “novelty” of image perception after the Digital. All this, in relation to the visitor’s experience in the museum calls for examining a possible degradation of value of the exhibited object. Do visitors understand the exhibits as ephemeral objects, decontextualized units, subjected to all forms of modulation and variability, automatically generated? Do they constitute only means of transcoding between the visitors’ subjective worlds and the results of an automated process? These questions are open for discussion and are further analyzed below.

However, we have clarified Manovichian analysis’ relevance as a theoretical tool for our study. McLuhan demonstrated how each medium has a unique impact upon the user, depending on each medium’s characteristics. We need to study the characteristics of each medium to understand how it affects us. For instance, using a musical instrument will affect our perception of music and if we become somehow connected to the instrument, we will progressively begin to perceive the world in a musical sense. Manovich specified the attributes of new media, which are descriptive of IBMPs, Thus, given the description of IBMPs’ features (subchapter 2.4.2), we now acquire a clearer view regarding the fields under impact. The medium’s message in every case of digital media is the set of Manovich’s principles. Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor’s accounts insightfully offer a further field of

- 47 - investigation for the human-digital image interaction, namely the computational/algorithmic factor, which is very much related to Manovich’s principles. Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor are actually observing the necessary inseparability between users, platforms and digital images. The automatically computed results function as a constant bondage between users and contents. When IBMP users interact with platforms, either by receiving bits of newsfeed, or by searching the results for a specified query, they become subjected to what the computing systems “understand” as relevant to them, given the fact that sufficient input has been provided to the mechanism:

“Hardware and software are not just tools any more. The computational processes involved often operate to a large extent beyond human control, and beyond the human level of intervention. In the most complex form of interactivity, the artefact itself changes as a consequence of interaction; equipped with its own 'nervous system', it 'senses' the participant, processes the received data and reacts accordingly, often using quasi-organic computer programmes.” (Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor, 2011, p. 4)

A kind of cultural translation is under process whenever (a) digital photographic input (together with its metadata) is provided to the computer which translates human cultural codes into algorithms of manipulable bits of data that will have to be stored, rearranged, and re-presented in the cases of (b) digital photographic output stemming from a computer or platform’s reply to queries or newsfeed operations, translated by humans in terms of cultural context. “[T]he translations of light, contour, depth, etc, into information must also ‘mean’ something for the computer in order for the manipulations of information to be carried out” (ibid.). Due to their “everyware” status acquired after the smart technology ubiquitousness, and the development of haptic graphical user interfaces allowing for somatic inter-relation of phenomenological embodiment (p. 9-10), digital images are tokens of our hybrid cyborgian nature: “A digital image results from a complex inter-relationship of physical, mathematical and technological principles, embedded within human and social situations. An extremely common, even natural, assumption about digital images is that they, like other images, are representations. Despite it’s [sic] apparent naturalness, it is an assumption that can be questioned” (2011 p. 1). Furthermore digital images act as augmenting prostheses, bridges, or “virtual windows” and “dynamic interfaces” (p. 9-10).

In any event, we need to emphasize on the importance of the pattern and the context instead of the form and the content to achieve our research goal: “if we ask why it looks as it

- 48 - does, we need to look for the reasons in the code, rather than in a mode of seeing” (Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor, 2011, p. 1). To understand the way users tend to “see” we need first to comprehend how codification operates, prior to what is codified within the user- IBMP relation. The following subchapter targets towards this direction, focusing on the process of decontextualization - this paper’s key theme for questioning future museum practices.

3.3 The Exhibitional Approach to IBMPs, Non-Human Curation and the Context Collapse

A conceptual analogy utilized to wander in the vast realm of the user-IBMP relation is Hogan’s “exhibitional approach” (2010, p. 381-383) which includes both some relevant and applicable elements for understanding the nature of IBMPs and some criticizable ones in regards to museological practices. This approach treats digital objects, like images, as exhibits playing roles on their own, having lost contact with their originators, when processed by other users. As he points out: “We can interact with the data left by others alongside direct interactions with people themselves. The world, then, is not merely a stage but also a participatory exhibit” (2010, p. 377). Hogan uses the analogy of a gallery’s exhibition with its surrounding network of agencies, in order to exemplify the relation of users, contents and platforms. Hogan’s direct analogy between a gallery and an on online platform is, according to our opinion, naive in a sense, and will be criticized. However, within his theorization there lies an important element, namely the “context collapse” which is going to be further applied for our research. To comprehend it thoroughly, though, we need to examine his exhibitional approach. The analogies he is drawing are synopsized below:

“An exhibition site can now be defined as a site (typically online) where people submit reproducible artifacts (read: data). These artifacts are held in storehouses (databases). Curators (algorithms designed by site maintainers) selectively bring artifacts out of storage for particular audiences. The audience in these spaces consists of those who have and those who make use of access to the artifacts. This includes those who respond, those who lurk, and those who acknowledge or are likely to acknowledge” (Hogan, 2010, p. 381). We will proceed to a short elaboration and evaluation of Hogan’s approach, which as he claims, is appropriate for the description of blog posts, online photo galleries and status updates (i.e., key features of IBMPs). The operating process taking place between individuals, third parties, and technologies for the circulation of images is described as such:

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“content is submitted to a third party, available to a large and potentially unknowable audience and tethered to a specific submitter” (ibid.). This process leads Hogan to recognize an analogy between exhibition spaces and online platforms. The analogy is taken afterwards for granted, and that appears to be problematic. Even if prospects about a Virtual Museum, or a Museum 2.0 envisaged an ideal circumstance where visitors contribute with material to the curatorial parties, this remains actually far from being pragmatically accomplished, and a curator or a museologist in a physical museum remains an operative active subject, an agency greater than a personless “third party.”

Hogan challenges IBMPs’ curatorship by ascribing the role of the curator to the algorithm, which is responsible for the images’/artifacts’ storing and management. He is right in abstracting the meaning of curator as the mediator of “our experience of social information,” but however this interpretation of what curatorship is, in pure museological terms becomes totally distorted. For Hogan, curatorship is now transferred towards the computers that “have taken on this role, devising continually more sophisticated ways to curate artifacts,” since the large amounts of generated data are utterly uncontrollable by humans (ibid.). The IBMP’s algorithm becomes the curator, the mediator, responsible for filtering, ordering, and searching artefacts that should be found expectedly relevant and interesting for the user. This becomes precisely the problematic point of the technology that alienates the museum visitor from the curated content. Since everything that IBMP users consume is mediated via non-human automated algorithms, hence lacking the significance of human involvement, it becomes quite probable that as museum visitors, they would treat exhibitions as mere computational results - unable to reflect upon the curator’s expertise. In Hogan’s understanding, algorithms and further computational processes should be regarded as acting agencies in the human-image interaction, “sensing” human semantics transcoded in theirs, often escaping human control, given unexpected results which affect the tropes of society, as described by Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor (2011, p. 6, see also chapter 1.2). Even if ambitious, this vision might have a foundational basis in phenomenological accounts of computer science, however, when speaking of pure museology it is too shallow an analogy: a physical exhibition is an organic mechanism which stems from the combination of multiple facets of factors.

A new perspective for an old practice, curation has always been responsible for “filtering, ordering, and searching artefacts,” even if the variables change in the online sphere. One’s

- 50 - daily experience with an IBMP newsfeed isn’t of need for all the available new data, but for some filtered ones that should be somewhat preferable, as an audience’s experience with an artist’s exhibition does not demand contact with the whole of the artist’s work, but with a significant representative part of it. “[F]iltering implies that one can evaluate a set of things before they are presented for consumption. Curators can do this because they retrieve things from a storehouse and put them on display,” judging through certain qualities inherent within the artifacts that have some semantic bondage with the targeted audience (Hogan, 2010, p. 382). It is important to note that for Hogan part of the curatorial practice is also found in the user’s side, in terms of preferring certain themes over others and organizing them using the IBMPs’ tools. However, Hogan does not emphasize at all on the actual semantization and conceptualization of the actions taken by the active human curators. While traditional curators are often actually considered artists themselves since every exhibition becomes the product of their subjective motivated expressions, Hogan’s algorithmic curators are meant to serve automatically the users’ visual preferences according to ambiguous data received on behalf of the user.

Another meaningful curatorial practice is the ordering function, which takes place according to the given task. Depending, for instance, on an exhibition’s conceptual context, items may be ordered chronologically, geographically, thematically, schematically, etc. Similar rules apply to the IBMP ordering criteria. Nevertheless, the fluid nature of the online, offers a multitude of preferable orderings and ranking systems - alphabetical orderings, most recent, favorites, individually preconfigured criteria, and others. “The order of online artifacts is based on the fact that each artifact is part of a set of similar artifacts that are known ahead of time” (ibid.). A critical view of this suggestion could be the following: the algorithmic non- human curator displays artifacts in a rather probable manner, as expected to be according to the task, aiming to offer results that will secure the verification of the users’ identities and will satisfy their interests. The physical human curator displays artifacts in a rather improbable manner, aiming to surprise the audience, being thought provocative in the museological context, always challenging and recontextualizing the previous worldviews instead of preserving them neutrally.

A combination of the above, filtering and ordering, together with the intentional input on behalf of the user equals the searching service offered by the online curatorial service. In Hogan’s elaboration, the curatorial development from human to algorithmic is schematized

- 51 - as such: while in pre-online societies, searching would be the task of an archivist-curator fulfilling the demands of visitors’ requests, a third party algorithmical curator now serves as the proper mediator for replying to specific queries. As Hogan states: “The role of the curator is to manage the preexisting content on behalf of the submitters” (ibid.). However, the curatorial role, as we have already expressed does not serve only popular or individual demands. The curator intentionally manages preexisting content in order to offer new images of the world, something which may happen only accidentally in algorithmic processes.

Algorithmic data and information management on behalf of the website curation further depends upon the voluntary submission of informative indications on behalf of the user. This submission is usually understood by the algorithms when users mark “friends” or “follow” pages. The efficiency of the returned results then, depends on the user’s willingness to provide with accurate data. Very often, though, users do not take advantage of the possibilities of fulfilling such a responsibility, thus, the random marking of “friends” and “interests” results with irrelevant material. The algorithm traces users by building repertoires of references among certain network nodes. The more data users submit to the system by clicking and “liking” material of interest, the better they are expected to be “understood” and served by the curatorial algorithm. Hogan describes the relation of information control and access between website and user by the formation of an online identity that becomes the decontextualized version of one’s multiple modes of being. For instance, one IBMP user of Tumblr may have simultaneous interests for very distant topics, eg. a specific clothing fashion, favorite celebrities, a special variety of cooking recipes, appreciation of a certain kind of architectural design. These tastes may seem contradictory to an external interrogator unfamiliar to the user. Moreover, the user may act very differently within different societal circumstances when being offline. Notwithstanding, all the different contexts related to a user, melt down in a decontextualizing manner, when representing the “self” by the constitution of a profile that links to several sub- representations of activities (given the presupposition that the user has a single account on his preferred IBMP). One should not forgo the fact that even if these digital repertoires become progressively more sophisticated, our current technological stage is still far from advanced artificial intelligence which might take into account corporeal factors such as tone of voice, secondary thinking, unconscious gestures etc. The sequence of these events contributes to the context collapse of the returned results. What actually happens is that the

- 52 - more “friends” and “interests” are marked as favorites, the greater the decontextualization process will be. Αs soon as a user interacts with an object, he or she enacts in the recontextualization of meaning, in contrast to the museological curation whose purpose is to impose contexts onto the visitor’s mind. Hogan refers to boyd in regards to the context collapse in non-human curatorship:

“boyd (2007) has referred to the existence of all of these groups in one space as the “collapsed contexts” quality of social network sites. For each of these contexts, one might have a slightly different presentation of self. Yet since they all have on-demand access to one’s online artifacts, this results in a decontextualization of any of these artifacts. Artifacts are not tied to situations but to individual profiles. The individual therefore comes to represent these same artifacts to all ‘friends.’” (Hogan, 2010, p. 383)

Summing up: In contrast to traditional exhibition spaces where human curators actively offer a specific context inviting visitors to take part in, bringing/contributing their own contexts for the structure of a unique exhibitional experience, the online exhibitional approach to IBMPs is the voluntary submission of visitors’/users’ contexts (each treated individually) to the automated curator/website which then offers services of filtering, ordering, and searching through the artifacts within storehouses/databases. The old question on freedom’s dialectic and and the presence or absence of external manipulation is apparent in this dipole of curatorial types: do users/visitors express themselves deliberately when succumbed to the vast amounts of random decontextualized objects? Is that sort of democracy actually democratic? Does an intentional contextual constraint imposed by a traditional curator actually limit the visitor’s freedom, or does it rather promote the expression of free will within the specified context? We propose that no absolute answer is yet to be suggested. Be that as it may, the role of contemporary museologists should be to deliver exhibitional literacy to the visitors, who should of course take into account the impact of IBMPs to visual perception. Both digital images and online identities become subjected to decontextualization, in the sense that they are numerically represented, modifiable objects. Users find in their reflected online representations a collapsed blended context of their otherwise distinct habits and activities, thus they must develop well-thought tactics (in conscious or subconscious levels) of what they choose to consume and publish. The museologist is ascribed a role of assistant, even an educator for such a process. Essentially, the museologist should promote the meaning of expressing intentionality throughout the unexpected nature of the designed exhibitions.

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Returning to our case study of the shomei tomatsu tag, it is clearly understood that the algorithmic curation played the most important role in our experience with the requested visual information. As we submitted the keyword of interest, the mechanisms inherent within all three IBMPs under examination, displayed a custom-made “exhibition of objects” serving our need for certain information. We were able to navigate among the mosaics, their subsets, examine exhibits closely, read their descriptions, and use filtering and ordering curatorial services depending on our preferences. All of that becomes a sort of a recontextualizing of the objects based on the available complementary information. The initial navigation experience though, is rather a strong decontextualizing one. This means that instead of a neat museological experience where the visitors’ thoughts and personal contexts blend with the offered exhibitional context, this sort of automated “exhibition” was a completely decontextualized one, and the greatest portion of responsibility was held by us. When we received the results replying to our query, the automatically curated mosaic of relevant collected objects is, expectedly, a literal collapse of all preexisting contexts behind each image. The only available context now is the purpose of our research, and anything else (the reasons behind one’s posture next to an artwork by Tomatsu, a newspaper publication for an upcoming exhibition of his, or a hotel decorated with his art) loses its prior singularity of unique intentionality. The same would apply if we were regular users of these IBMPs, receiving daily newsfeed combining our interests, or if we specified our search criteria by adding the name of second photographer, generating a novel instant context negating the preexisting ones. We have no traces of what uploading an image of a Tomatsu’s book next to a cup of coffee means, but we project however our own research goals upon the image if we feel attracted by it. Oppositely, if we visited a physical exhibition of Tomatsu’s work, we should be guided by the museological exhibition arrangement, encouraged to follow the objects’ cultural biographies (Gosden & Marshall, 1999), a narrative, a storyline or even a specific visitor’s path (Tzonos, 2013, p. 268-269). The context would be imposed upon us and the purpose would be to recontextualize exhibits in a more playful and educative manner. The feeling of context collapse would progressively be replaced by context construction.

Frequent usage of media has impacts on their users’ related body faculties, as McLuhan delivered. Hence, we hypothesize that visual social media and specifically IBMPs will affect users’ visual perception in the long-run, as it happened after the invention of previous pictorial media, as oil-painting, photography, television, video, etc. As the spatial design in

- 54 - museums changed after the involvement of novel artistic techniques (like huge installations or video art), it should be expected that the conceptual design of exhibitions and curatorial approaches will also change after the shift of visual perception based on IBMPs (for a thorough elaboration on spatial and conceptual museological design, see Tzonos, 2013, p. 184-197). The McLuhanesque process of the medium reshaping the user after frequent interaction is verified in the IBMPs’ long endurance. The next chapter will further discuss and criticize the impact of IBMPs on the potential museum audiences and elaborate on proposals for museum communication strategies according to the novel technological status.

CHAPTER 4 THE COLLAPSING VIRTUAL MUSEUM AND THE POWER OF THE IMAGE: DISCUSSING MUSEOLOGICAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AFTER IBMPS

“But what is the connected without the connecting? What is this object that is still not an object for someone?” (Merleau-Ponty, 2012, p. 248).

The present chapter is divided into three main parts. The first discusses critically the previous theoretical findings in regards to the impact IBMPs are expected to have in museological practices. This to clarify that the conceptual attempts of granting prevalence of non-human agency in curatorship over human one are mostly false suggestions deriving from an already collapsed vision of a Virtual Museum. After this critique, the second part aims to realistically investigate the actual impact of IBMPs upon users, eventually leading to the third part that denotes the museologist’s role in structuring contemporary museum’s communication strategies. An additional fourth brief subchapter presents some exceptional cases of very successful current utilization of IBMPs in museums of great impact. Thus, the scope of this research will be fulfilled: after understanding the operational and practical nature of IBMPs, we will be able to comprehend how they will affect museological experiences in their actual physical space.

4.1 The Recurrence of the Physical: Is the Virtual Museum Dead?

In chapter 2 we examined the historical emergence of novel online tools following the philosophy of Web 2.0 and briefly mentioned the ideal of Museum 2.0. Museum 2.0 was a

- 55 - concept inspired from Web 2.0, but not necessarily realized online. On the contrary, the previous notion of the Virtual Museum, was a model for a possible complete digital representation of the museum’s content, that attracted ambitious thinkers in the beginning of 21st century, as the internet counted roughly a decade in its expansion. We have presented Hogan’s exhibitional approach to IBMPs and criticized it for lacking factual applicability as an understanding of the platforms’ nature. Hogan’s direct, superficial analogy between exhibitions and platforms is actually closer to the philosophy of the Virtual Museum, an ideal holding much potential but however very low levels of actual realization. We will hereby elaborate briefly on the reasons that led the vision of a Virtual Museum to remain at an experimental level, in order to obtain a pragmatic view of the remaining features of IBMPs that should be employed by a museologist mainly as communication strategies. The vision held by supporters of the Virtual Museum can be summarized in the words of Bowen:

“with the advent of the Internet, it is increasingly possible for the providers to reach out to the gatherers who may be located in their homes, workplaces, schools, libraries, etc. Museums are well placed to provide real content that is appealing to network users.” (Bowen, 2000, p. 4)

The main problem discussed across almost all realistic views on the Virtual Museum is the inapplicability of its actual virtual nature. Swartout et. al., asked: “Could virtual humans be used to create museum guides that can engage visitors with museum content?” (2010, p. 286). They have set experiments with artificial/virtual humanoids for educational purposes, but however realized the multitude of factors that should be taken into account for achieving a genuine virtual simulation of human interaction. A visual representation is by no means satisfactory as long as the virtual interaction remains still far from including recognition of gestural elements such as facial expressions, body stance, tone of voice semantization etc.

Another emerging factor found in literature related to Virtual Museums, is the growing technology of Graphic User Interfaces (GUIs), and its possible applications on Virtual Reality, such as touchscreen mobile phones, Virtual Reality gloves and glasses etc. Following Manovich’s positions, Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor (2011, p. 9-10) insist on the augmenting features of our visual prostheses for our perception. “As digital images become ubiquitous, attached to us as “everyware,” haptically responsive and increasingly visually

- 56 - immersive with gaming and social networking “second worlds,” the phenomenological lesson of relatedness becomes technologically embodied.” The future visual-haptic platforms are probably going to evoke challenges for the self-understanding beyond the visual field, affecting the tactile modes of thinking. A future hypothesis may be that, as digital images become now predominant over the previously text-centered societies, subsequently, haptic technological revolutions will render the visual out of date in favor of the haptic. It is noteworthy, though, that all these future scenarios are far from becoming parts of everyday status, due to the vast amount of human resources that are needed to handle them and economic ones to fund their development and democratization. Almost all the available literature criticizes the huge costs such technologies have, thus keeping them in the experimental sphere. Remarkable experiments, nonetheless, are the ones of Asano et. al. (2005) and their 15 haptic virtual museums and Carrozzino & Bergamasco (2010) and their Virtual Museum of Sculpture. Both of them do not hesitate to criticize their own vision when it comes to expenses for applying such haptic virtual technologies.

More recently, Sylaiou et. al. have gathered all contemporary technical aspects of Virtual Museums, such as imaging technology, Web3D, virtual, augmented and mixed reality exhibitions, haptics and handheld devices (2009, p. 522-524). However, their article correctly criticizes the notion of the Virtual Museum as too oxymorous to be taken for reality. By no means, as they conclude, the Virtual Museum should be taken as equal to the physical, but only as a digital reflection of it, similar to the shadows of the Platonic cave (ibid., p. 525-526). The following passage is revealing in regards to a critical stance towards the nature of Virtual Reality applied to museology:

“‘VR’ (an oxymoron) cannot have the complexity of the real objects. Virtual museum comes from Greek dynaton (gr. δυνατóν=possible) and it means “that in potential” (Aristotle, Analitici primi) and exists in potential form and not in reality. The problem is that advanced graphic systems that are used for computer reconstructions adopted by virtual museums may sometimes be too realistic. They are based on partial evidence, but they suggest an impression of good knowledge of the past. Sometimes advanced graphic systems present the ‘image’ as true, giving the sense of misleading accuracy. [...] [T]he result will not be an explanation of the past, but a personal and subjective way of seeing it. A good ‘image’ can give the impression to the viewer that museologists know more than they actually do. Some products of computer reconstructions can be considered as scientifically accurate, because they seem to be accurate. The term “user” is used for virtual museum visitors, because, in order to retrieve information on virtual exhibits, computer skills are

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required. This means that the computer illiterate are automatically excluded and a lot of visitors encounter difficulties with understanding the use of plug-ins and other applications that need to be downloaded from the Internet and installed in order to retrieve information from sophisticated virtual museum exhibitions.” (ibid., p. 525)

Several critical counterpoints are gathered above, such as the exclusion of the computer illiterates and the pseudo-knowledge and pseudo-contexts generated by virtualities, contrary to the museum’s educational purpose. Aranda, Wood & Vidokle (2015) claim provocatively in their recent volume of criticism on the nature of the internet that “the internet does not exist.” Something that everyone tries to get hold on, be part of it, make benefits out of it, used to be a potential of great dynamics some 25 years ago, but now the visions of a completely democratic immaterial utopia seem to collapse (like the contexts of images in IBMPs). While the trend of the past two decades was the digitization of everything, it seems that today a return to physical and material appreciation is prevailing - affected however by the internet’s power:

“The internet is probably not dead. It has rather gone all out. Or more precisely: it is all over! This implies a spatial dimension, but not as one might think. The internet is not everywhere. Even nowadays when networks seem to multiply exponentially, many people have no access to the internet or don’t use it at all. And yet, it is expanding in another direction. It has started moving offline” (Steyeri, in Aranda, Wood & Vidokle, 2015, p. 11)

Indeed, virtualities have a purposeful power, but their end becomes the return to the physical - and as Sylaiou et. al. note, “[r]esearch has revealed that 70% of people visiting a museum website would subsequently be more likely to go and visit the ‘real’ museum” (2009, p. 524). Hogan’s stance is static, emphasizing on the virtual without any emphasis on the physical. To speak of the algorithmic curator as a modifier of the physical one is to an extent mere science fiction. However, the impact of technologies, and more specifically IBMPs and their digital environments, to users/potential visitors is undeniable. The next chapter sheds light to the actual factors of impact inherent in the everyday usage of IBMPs, that should be considered by museologists for developing future strategies.

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4.2 The Actual Impact of IBMPs on their Users’ Visual Perception: Images, Connectivity and the Path to Pictorial Literacy

There are two important elements that a contemporary museologist and curator should keep in mind regarding the nature of IBMPs: (a) our fast world is invaded by technological apparatuses and platforms that are based on images that are by definition much more direct (even if decontextualized) than text-centered means of communication, and that (b) constant connectivity results in reshaping of the identity, rendering these technologies an inseparable part of a potential visitor’s gear. Practically, the vast majority of new generation is deeply bonded with their mobile devices for they can constantly verify their identities’ structure by capturing pictorial moments of their experiences and sharing them online.

The McLuhanesque user-tool reflecting relation is nevertheless responsible for the constant development of this process. As long as connected cameraphones weren’t so popular, there was no need for “Instagram.” The massive production of images and the cost decrease of the devices, though, had as a result, the evolution of the platforms and the need for better devices as well. The vast population’s intentionality is continually under modification, shifted by the prior knowledge of constant connectivity. As Fricho puts it, “images have become ‘visual agencies’ that not only constitute but also shape materiality – not vice versa” (2014). IBMPs, as we exemplified in Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram’s presentations became extremely popular in a very short time, much shorter than text-centered platforms, like email services and blogs in previous decades. The image’s “agency” is a much more realistic account affecting the users than the computational algorithms.

Porter’s (2013) insistence on “taking images seriously” within the context of jurisdiction, is however inclusive of the seriousness of images in every sort of human activity compared to traditional text-driven societies, highlighting the special attributes of images. Carney & Caiger-Smith (2012) reflect on “the developing technology of social media, and the relationship between art objects, images of art objects, and viewers” (p. 2) in the context of artistic and museological experiences via “contemporary uses of photography.” Drawing from these two sources, we’ll elaborate on how potential museum visitors perceive the pictorial world through images and technical features of constant connectivity, and thus how they are expected to understand pictorial stimuli in the museum.

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As Porter notes, we “approach it from a gestalt perspective, taking it all at once,” (2013, p. 1753) even if we focus on its “parts” (that we perceive and project) in a moment later than our initial encounter. While the reading of the text requires devotion in order to contextualize the contents and then schematize possible applications and variations, the reading of images allows the instant mental assembly of fragmentary available parts in less than a second. A “better image” of a text is given when a scheme, (that is, an image) is provided. Imagination functions faster if it is invoked instantly, rather than if it results from a textual explanatory process. Porter correctly marks that we have never been taught to read “images” in our primary education, as we were only affronting the difficulties of learning the complex structures of verbal communication. This, the ease or even the skip of learning to read, together with the ease of remembering and recalling, constitute the “picture superiority effect” (ibid.). As easily one confronts an image, that easily one skips an image, as when scrolling down. It would be totally unsubstantial to claim that each time users receive their IBMPs’ newsfeed are having moments of enlightenment for each image they confront. Thus, the purpose of pictorial literacy re-emerges: part of the museologist’s educational role should be the exercising of contemplating and critically perceiving pictorial material by recontextualization processes.

The process of “context collapse” exemplified above can be explained by relating it to Porter’s accounts on “naïve realism,” defined as “a fundamental part of our psychological makeup and hence a default mode of response to our mediated world.” When humans see images, sometimes their perceptive mechanism “skips” the conscious interpretation step, proceeding directly to a confident apprehension of them almost as if they weren’t representations. (Porter, 2013, p. 1754). Or as Carney & Caiger-Smith put it:

There is now an anonymity and performativity in the enterprise of digital interaction that positions photography even closer to theater than to painting—a resonance that was originally suggested by Barthes. Current applications of photography, while still inextricably tied to imagings and imaginings of reality, are now also about the presentation, selection, and the hyper-real simulation of our life experiences in an instantaneous, public, and mass-distributable fashion. (2012, p. 14-15)

This absence of critique in receiving messages through images (which is the basic foundation of the argument-based rationality of texts, making them preferable to images in cases of evidence), this naïve realism should be related to the decontextualized terms imposed by IBMPs’ newsfeed and search engines. When we use pictorial daily services designed to feed

- 60 - our personal tastes, yet mixing and mingling our offline contexts, the result becomes a blurred version of our identity, closer to a brainstorming process, instead of a systematized study of a field of interest. Similarly, when we use an IBMP to search for contents of our interests, the results will lose any premodified context they used to bear and be presented to us as representations of a newborn context we just generated. Prioritizing a keyword, a “hashtag” over another, we perceive the displayed images in the naïve context of single- purposeness. Humans simply are in need of developing their visual literacy, as they do with argument structuring, and sources’ reliability recognition. We need to develop critical stances towards the recognition and projection of visual context. One of the possible future goals for museology could precisely be to support this sort of pictorial literacy in terms of recognizing or ascribing contexts and meaning to perceived pictures, as well as etiquettes for sharing material. The usage of IBMPs and their internal tools, like hashtags or categorizations, should be employed in contemporary museological practices. As Van House concludes, the “context collapse” will replace Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” - while images were a priori bonded to a context, the massive production and display of them, eventually leads to the loss of context.

“Image-based memory will become more voluminous but less private and more public, based less on local, personal images and more on shared ones. We may see a loss of specificity, of images of local value with local meanings attached, at the same time that people have more access to the collective record. We may lose what Nissenbaum (2009) calls ‘contextual integrity’, an alignment of information gathering and display and therefore meaning within specific contexts” (Van House, 2011, p. 133)

Users of IBMPs don’t necessarily look for originality in an image per se. It is precisely due to the image’s intentionally representational nature that they use these platforms in order to recognize the identities of the producers - as well as their own identities in preferring certain images over others, even if such an identity construction is shallow and ephemeral if not exercised with conscience. “At the heart of this argument is the idea that nothing is a representation in the absence of the human interest in making it so; and that an important reason why we are so compellingly interested in aesthetic representations is what they tell us about human intentionality” (Carusi, Novakovic, & Webmoor, 2011, p. 3). So, it is up to the user to make pictorial sense in an image-saturated environment, but for all technical means introduced throughout human history, there have been instructors for their fruitful

- 61 - and constructive usage - in this case, large portions of this responsibility belong to the museums.

Porter, always within legislative contexts, suggests the endorsement of the “nonplainmeaning rule,” (2013, p. 1778). Pictures, no matter their intensity and self-evident nature are never in lack of an underlying meaning or narrative. Every picture has a story behind, which judges should always take into account and emphasize upon within the court. IBMPs users are individual judges, in the sense of taking decisions for their own benefits in each of their lived instances. That is, degrees of awareness consciousness should be raised towards this direction. “Rather than ignoring the visual, we should regulate it, through formal and rhetorical techniques analogous to those we have long ago developed for text” (ibid., p. 1782).

One should be cautious in a double manner when inspecting images in IBMPs: in terms of recognizing strategic intentions on behalf of the uploading party on the one hand, and on the other, for the correct translation of the meanings imposed. One may further critically hypothesize that daily encounters of images evoking such exceptional feelings may lead to an apathy or nihilism of feelings, a degradation of values, due to the habitual customization to the unusual. The positivist side, however, may claim that human experience becomes thus richer and somehow augmented, if new tools are used after critical reflection on their contents.

Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius’ (2013) aforementioned a priori “compositional concerns” alongside with the following a posteriori dissemination strategies, can be interpreted as a semiotic reversal of vectors of signification: Whilst the recording of an event was originally a secondary action following the primary experience, we now observe that recording and experiencing are integrated into a single primary action, as an effect of “constant connectivity” (Porter, 2013, p. 1720). In addition, the reversal may have even greater magnitude, to the extent of activities we often witness daily: creators of images do not use IBMPs as means to disseminate their creations, but instead create images in order to use IBMPs. Subsequently, consumers of images are subjected to the superficiality of immeasurable amounts of images displaced as “art for art’s sake,” and not as meaningful information. As Porter observes, our current visual culture of collapsed contexts “raises the level of detachment to the point of cynicism, and it replaces deep reading with fragmented

- 62 - and often frenetic surfing” (2013, p. 1769-1770). Criteria on behalf of image receptors should then be sharpened for recognizing the significant over the ephemeral within the otherwise colorful and interactive saturated environment of IBMPs.

Connected devices, and especially wireless ones added to the digital innovation of photographic imaging the motivation for the user to become an instance of effectuation for Susan Sontag’s preview of “the continuing hyper-realization and spectacularization of the modern experience when she described ‘that mentality which looks at the world as a set of potential photographs’ which is made possible and exacerbated by technology” (Carney & Caiger-Smith, 2012, p. 15). Tools and objects that stay connected to each other, are also connecting users, forming networks and can be considered decisive factors for a new understanding of reality on behalf of the user.

A return to the Mcluhanesque narcissus/narcosis effect should be utilized here. Indeed, humans often act in numbness in front of the vast arrays of images, in desperate need of even more images. To take a picture and to share it through social media has often been the key experience over the one supposedly captured for many people nowadays. “It often feels as if we can no longer experience anything if we don't first alienate it. In fact, alienation may now be a necessary preface to experience” (O’Doherty in Carney & Caiger-Smith, 2012, p. 16). However though, as long as McLuhan’s axiom applies, the result will be the final accustomization of humans to the new technological means, and hence the augmentation of their abilities through them. It just takes time and inspirational guidance. The point of separation should become the point of departure, and technology, instead of being an end to itself, effectuates its purpose by modifying our image perception and by broadening the horizon of possibilities given through linkability, highspeed connections, rearrangement of contexts, direct icon-driven cultural processes, and constant interaction. Keeping in mind all of the above dynamics inherent in images and IBMPs for the impact upon user’s perception of images, we may now proceed to their employment by museologists for providing with a richer museum experience, satisfying the needs of the emergent generations.

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4.3 Incorporating the Many-to-Many Model through IBMPs in the Museum: Communication Strategies and Emerging Skills

The present chapter explores communication strategies museums should incorporate in regards to IBMPs, highlighting the mutual benefits for both audiences and museologists through this process. The interaction between human subjects and their visual objects has changed notably after the democratization of smart devices and the subsequent development of IBMPs. Social media will affect in a realistic manner the museum strategies in both short and long term (Russo et. al., 2007, p. 20). Contemporary IBMPs users which are potential museum visitors feel that visual stimuli act as verifications of their identities, instead of informational building blocks for the structure of their identities. Their self- conception is central in relation to the surrounding world - they do not understand themselves as peripheral parts of a general center. They ascribe context to what they see, instead of letting the external factors to modify them through their contexts. Whatever they see in their external environments, serves as a potential picture which after being taken and shared will verify their existence and uniqueness. Contemporary museologists, thus, should build up visitor-oriented strategies and align their skills and policies with the currently emerging sociotechnical features.

Museum practices for engaging audiences have evolved in a similar manner with the aforementioned transition from Web 1.0 to 2.0 and the negation of art gatekeepers as the absolute authoritative source of aesthetic knowledge. Russo et. al. (2006, 2007) divide the types of the museum communication strategies for building digital connection to its audiences into the following three models:  “one-to-one (i.e. user to user);  one-to-many (i.e. museum to user – web pages and blogs);  many-to-many (knowledge to knowledge – wikis).” (2007, p. 21).

As they demonstrate, one-to-one and one-to-many models are closer to the traditional museological views with the museum’s objects having a central position for the authoritative communication of preexisting knowledge. Briefly, centrally controlled digital representations of the museum (its website, blog, social media profiles, etc.) communicate its contents to audience which are incapable of being involved in the educative process. In the many-to- many model, closer to post-museum structures, instead of the objects, the narratives are the significant centers of interest. As users follow an interactive museological storyline,

- 64 - building their own experiences motivated through the exhibits and the conceptual narratives, in the same manner they are invited to build digital representations of their experiences via collectively modifiable social media of the Web 2.0 type. Such a digital documentation of the museum experience marks the transition from an authoritative sort of knowledge to what Russo et. al. designate as authentic knowledge. The role of the curator and museologist in authentic communication of knowledge is to regulate the recognition of limitations of the museum’s possibilities. Partnership in the museum, after acknowledging the experiences and contexts visitors bring with them (Watkins and Mortimore 1999 Falk & Dierking 2000; Hein 1998, Hooper-Greenhill, 2000 in Russo et. al., 2007), is reflected and can even become enhanced by employing social media applications.

Terminologically, this process has been designated under the concepts of the integrative museum, the engaging museum, the participatory museum and the social inclusive museum (Stuedahl & Lowe, 2013, p. 304). Such discussions revolve around the transforming process of reconceptualized knowledge institutions and the integration of new technologies as means of building “new relationships to society and thereby relationships with the museum visitor” (Vergo 1997, Davies 1998 in Stuedahl & Lowe, 2013, p. 304). Stuedahl & Lowe observe the development of image-based platforms and new media, thus promote their utilization in participatory design practices in their designation of the “distributed” and “mobile” museum (2013).

However, before discussing in detail the embeddedness of IBMPs in the museum, we should first begin by some general considerations in regards to the appropriation of social media as museological tools. Russo et. al. (2006) suggest that social media networks provide “ a significant and possibly more efficient way of ‘making public’ the ways in which audiences respond to cultural content” (p. 4) in post-museum environments, where participation and communication are prioritized values for the best extending of innovative knowledge communication. Educative programs which include partnership with the museum audiences and active involvement of the latter to the exploration of the museum’s goals should be much more effective than traditional top-down schemes. Russo et. al. summarize both the benefits and the difficulties imposed by social media platforms in museological contexts. Namely, on the positive side, social media:  “act as trusted cultural online networks;  distribute community knowledge; and

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 view their role as custodians of cultural content” (2006, p. 1)

The youth, more and more attracted to the networked and complex reality of social media, can become closely engaged in a museum institution, if the latter employs social media structuring after collaboration “with designers, communications experts and educationists” (Russo, et. al., 2007, p. 20). Such a multifaceted strategy will take advantage of the immediate potential of new social media, as young people will feel more familiar within a museum environment that is closer to their understanding of the world. Knowledge and experiences circulate through social media, allowing for interaction of networks which include individuals, communities involved in the museum, surrounding communities, and the very museum itself that may reflect on its accomplishments:

“As social media facilitate knowledge exchange through social networking, they can be used to encourage audiences to respond to their museum experience and relate these thoughts back to themselves, to communities of interest and to the museum itself in ways which are meaningful to them.” (Russo et. al., 2007, p. 26)

Specifically in relation to IBMPs, their benefits in the short term would lie principally in the engagement of the visitor in interacting with the exhibited objects and the museum environments photographically and sharing their experiences with their personal networks developed through their IBMPs’ profiles. In contrast to other social media in general, IBMPs are more instant in their applicability. The power of the image, explored in the previous chapter, allows an IBMP user to share experiences more directly, than for instance a text- based platform, like a text blog. Furthermore, pictures taken with connected mobile devices do not produce large sized documents, and that means they are rapidly uploaded and shared - much faster than videos take to be uploaded on video-based platforms like YouTube. This is the main reason that IBMPs are easier to become utilized for the attraction of young visitors. Inviting people to share pictures using museum-generated or related hashtags has more possibilities of success than inviting them to write down their experiences in blogs or narrating them in vlogs.

On the long run, social media platforms may provide with a terrain of interdisciplinary exploration “multimedia design, museum studies, communication, learning and community informatics to:

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 Generate cross-disciplinary connections between museum communication processes, multimedia design, digital content creation, smart information use and user-led innovation.  Position museums to take a primary role in debate between the world’s leading international cultural institutions on the implications of new social media practices.  Provide practical examples of ways in which public investment in museums can engage technology-saturated young people with social and scientific history.  Explore notions of identity through social history and major science issues.” (Ibid.).

Especially through the pictorial sphere, the visual elements render associations of any kind much more recognizable when debating and researching cross-cultural and identity issues or the audiences’ relations with exhibits and scientific questioning. Pictures capture notions that are difficult to grasp in non-pictorial means, such as gestures, facial expressions, preferences of specific contents, and the close study of publicly available user-generated material can become the raw material for studying sociologically the impact of the exhibits on the visiting audience. Furthermore, given the fact that a museum is a constant cultural point of reference, it is an ideal place to study societal changes, fashions, and population characteristics.

On the other hand, however, social media, due to their open-ended nature which is uncontrollable from a central point, might result to some practical structural ambiguities when designing educational or curatorial programs:  “the museum is unable to predict the ways in which social media will be used;  it is difficult to predict the number of people who will participate (affecting download speeds and time);  it is difficult to plan for consistent length/duration of participation” (Ibid., p. 5)

Those drawbacks, the unpredictability of both the results, handling and future of social media practices are issues that should be subjected to strategic manipulation from museologists specialized in digital literacies. The better a museological program is, the better its digital representations will be on the public online domain. Furthermore, if the museum staff is able to provide with clear guidelines regarding specific plans for digital engagement, a more professional general image of the museum will be constituted. For instance, if a museum invites users to take and share pictures with a specific purpose, as in the context of

- 67 - a game, the results will be consistent - however, occasionally, less guidance constraints might provide with more pluralistic results; so, the policy followed by the museum depends on the desired promotion accomplishments. Deriving from the unpredictability of digital content dissemination, we should mention here the possible infringement of copyrighted exhibited material. Some museums allow pictures to be taken, justifying the action by the educational purpose of the capturing, but it should be expected that several museums might prefer to protect their copyrighted objects from the automated circulation that might follow an uploading of an image (that in many cases happens with no reference to the creator at all - both Manovich’s automation axiom and Hogan’s context collapse theories apply in this case).

Some further negative sides of employing social media techniques in the museum are the following two factors, described by Drotner & Schrøder (2014). Firstly, the commercial nature of social media forces both users and museologists to perceive digitally mediated museum experiences in terms of numbers of clicks, “likes,” and “views.” This invites an ethical criticism of social media as promoters of quantitative rankings over qualitative content evaluation - a fact that causes the reversal of ends and means. Instead of contents becoming popular because of their actual value, certain objects may be exhibited due to their expected popularity. The second negative element is the great need of economic and human resources for the professional management of a museum’s representation and general enrollment in social media. Genuine and holistic usage of social media for the benefits of the museum may require specialists employed solely for that reason, since much time, effort and special managerial skills are required for the museum communication (Drotner & Schrøder, 2014, 6-7).

We should remind here that by all means, the democratization of media does not undermine the unique role of the museum curator. Neither the algorithm, nor the audience can replace the curator’s expertise within the museum’s context. Indeed, to a certain extent one may draw analogies of curation in some practices, but only within the scope of utilizing metaphors for non-museological environments. The role of the curator remains crucial, as expressed by Stimler:

“While scholars and museum visitors contribute to the enrichment of curatorial practice through a social media dialogue, I do not share the view that using social media makes everyone a curator.

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Curators are the most trusted art experts, whose aggregated knowledge, critical thinking abilities, and aesthetic observations define the meaning and value of art.” (Stimler, in Proctor, 2010)

Curators and museologists in general should be accustomed to new technologies and acquire related skills, probably in collaboration with other specialists as computer scientists, web designers and information scientists in order to maximize the benefits of working with individual amateur photographers, writers, and other audience members for the creation of Web 2.0 material like wikis, images circulated in various platforms, blog entries, videos, etc. “Interaction with digital sources and connections requires a specific sensibility, and museums may need to pay more attention to their role in shaping this sensibility to encourage engagement with their collections” (De Rijcke & Beaulieu, 2011, p. 683). Contemporary museologists should be increasingly aware of “the connections between media, knowledge, and engagement” (ibid.).

IBMPs should be employed within the museum’s programs for utilizing the aforementioned power of the image and the constant connectivity, the two basic ground-breaking elements which constitute the uniqueness of this type of platforms. De Rijcke & Beaulieu (2011) have elaborated in detail in regards to both the photographic power in relation to the preservation and dissemination of the museum contents, and the images and platforms utilization of interface for gaining a richer museum experience aligned with the contemporary needs. De Rijcke & Beaulieu highlight the image as a powerful and central “interface,” acting significantly in the formation of the museum experience not only for the museum professionals but also equally for the audience. In treating the IBMP-mediated image as a main interface, they wish to degrade the labels of producers and consumers ascribed to museologists and audiences respectively: audiences generate novel cultural content, participating at the totality of the museum experience, and museologists receive feedback for their work and offerings through the images which express the reception of the experience (Ibid., 665).

De Rijcke & Beaulieu understand digital images taken by users within museums as “portable, spontaneously produced, and easily translatable across technological platforms,” “related to each other within databases or with many other resources on the Web and that they serve as support for mediated social interactions such as discussion, annotation, or photosharing” (2011, p. 664). Due to their direct nature, images “become themselves forms of engagement

- 69 - and of embedding that shape access to and the production of knowledge” (ibid.). According to them, images become progressively active objects, inviting for a multilayered revision regarding “how to interact with an image,” “how museums then think about images in situ,” “how museums view their role” in a networked society where images go beyond their physical boundaries. Ultimately, we witness the reinscribing of “museums and other institutions in contemporary visual culture where media coverage and user-generated content is increasingly relevant” (ibid. p. 665-666).

One of the most important parts of the museologist’s educational role in the age of IBMPs is to teach users how to see in context. Image size, quality, source, manipulation, display, position, purpose “are all elements that shape how users can interact with the visual material and must be taken into account” (Alaç, 2008, Goodwin, 1995 in De Rijcke & Beaulieu, 2011, p. 673). Given the fact that most of the museum’s objects are visual, one shouldn’t be surprised by the immediate successful establishment of IBMPs as mediators between visitors and exhibits. As long as the exhibits are visually attractive, the observers will be eager to include this attractiveness within their pictorial network. Furthermore, if audiences become somehow motivated in taking pictures for a specific purpose with a possible reward for their effort, the two parties - museum and users - will become mutually benefitted. For instance, Stuedahl & Lowe suggest the example of photographic contests through IBMPs, which invite amateur photographers to show their skills within museum environments. This way, the photographers get rewarded by the opportunity to publish their works through the museum’s online portals (the museum’s website or profile on an IBMP redirecting to the photographer’s profile). At the same time, the museum has benefits in terms of circulation and advertisement sourced from the motivated crowd (Stuedahl & Lowe, 2013, p. 674-675).

The triplet of popular IBMPs we have exemplified in the second chapter - Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram - appear to be significantly effective in constructing novel types of relationships between museums and their audiences. Representations of museums are found in all three of the platforms, even if no particular invitation has been given to audiences. Indeed, regular usage of IBMPs for presenting museum contents fosters the museum’s transcending of physical barriers. More specifically, “Instagram photo taking has been defined as a new visitor practice in exhibitions,” since the colorful and imaginary environment is something exceptional for the visitors that are eager to share such

- 70 - experiences within their networks. Flickr, another famous image-based platform (not only of the microblogging type, however adaptable to the IBMP style recently), is also often prefered for its tagging and geotagging features, as well as for its high quality services for digitized versions of museum content based on folksonomies. Through this sort of informational and pictorial crowdsourcing, the museum’s quality of collection is increased, enriched through “correcting, contextualizing, complementing, co-curating of photographic historical content.” The demand for more consistent and widely adopted strategies towards regular museological incorporation of IBMPs is still apparent (Hillman, Weilenmann & Jungselius, 2012, Colquhoun & Galani, 2013, Dalton, 2010, Trant, 2009, Oomen & Aroyo, 2011, Wasserman, 2011, in Stuedahl & Lowe, 2013 p. 305).

In conclusion, the extended usage of social media in museums has a triple benefit. It simultaneously promotes the dissemination of existing material, the communication with and between audience members in regards to museum contents, and the generation of novel experiences and digital artifacts which are undeniably parts of our era’s cultural heritage. More than preserving and presenting previous contents, the museum facilitates and motivates the generation of novel material. IBMPs are proven to be the most direct and fast among online platforms so far, due to the images’ pluralistic nature combined with the platforms’ mobility and connectivity. “By promoting user-generated content, museums could enable cultural participants to be both critics and creators of digital culture. Yet the widespread viability and sustainability of social media as tools for curatorial practice, participatory communication and informal learning in museums, libraries, galleries and archives remains to be determined” (Russo, et. al., 2007, p. 26). Through promoting non- authoritative, authentic modes of knowledge dissemination, the museum re-constitutes its initial and righteous authority as a cultural center of our times. It is, however, early to judge about the long term effects of social media usage in the museums. It is, nonetheless, quite expected that frequent usage of IBMPs in museums will generate a vast amount of valuable raw pictorial material subjected to various inter- and extradisciplinary studies about the relation of humanity with the preservation of its culture.

4.4 Museums Utilizing IBMPs Effectively: Some Examples

As already said, not many museums have consistently utilized a wide range of IBMPs as frequently applied means for their digital representation, audience engagement, and

- 71 - knowledge distribution. This happens partially due to the lack of economic and human resources, due to the underdevelopment of related skills, and also due to the relative novelty of the media. Most probably, in the long term an increasing amount of museums will include IBMPs as a constant part of their communication strategies, as it happened for instance with simple websites after the surpassing the Internet’s infancy. Some world- famous museums then, leading institutions in the world of contemporary museology should be taken as examples for the fruitful application of IBMPs’ potential for all aspects of communicational benefits. We have chosen to briefly mention two museums that make simultaneous use of all three popular platforms, to show that the success in terms of museological magnitude is in dialectic feedback with the maximization of strategic pluralism: the more platforms are being used to communicate and advertise the museum, the more successful the institution will be, and the more successful a museum is, the more platforms it should be expected to utilize.

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Above: the Instagram account, Middle: the Pinterest account, Below: the Tumblr account

of the Warhol Museum

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Above: the Instagram account, Middle: the Pinterest account, Below: the Tumblr account

of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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The first case is the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. While the museum is active in all three platforms, its best representation is found in its Pinterest profile. There, an online visitor may find thematic sections, dividing the artist’s work in multiple ways. Several boards include biographical aspects of Warhol’s character perspectives, or his works divided in chronological and stylistic groups (Complex Magazine, 2012). Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is another exemplar case of IBMPs successful strategic inclusion. Its Pinterest boards serve as means of introduction to the museum, including "LACMA Through the Years," a historical approach to the presentation of the museum, together with the navigational "Places & Spaces" board. The museum’s Tumblr profile is very active in promoting their indoors happenings, while other museums and art-related programs that might interest their followers are often advertised there. LACMA’s Instagram profile is used mostly for presenting more ephemeral, backstage and informal aspects of the museum’s environment. LACMA, judiciously using all three IBMPs for different purposes in a complementing manner, has built thus an iconic online identity, connecting their digital historical and spatial presentation with networks embracing their various audiences and related institutions (Pasori, 2013, Complex Magazine, 2012, Castro, 2013). Other noteworthy examples of social media and IBMPs integration in museum practices include the National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution) in the USA and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, even if they don’t make usage of all three popular platforms. Both of them have pioneered in social media interaction, constantly experimenting with user-led innovation in various of their projects, providing even with their unique online platforms of engagement, regulating the middle ground between control on behalf of the museum and freedom of expression on behalf of the users (Russo et. al., 2007). Of equal magnitude are the cases of the Brooklyn Museum, the Meropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), the MoMA, the Mercedes-Benz Museum, the Chicago History Museum, and deYoung Museum (Pasori, 2013, Complex Magazine, 2012, Castro, 2013). Of special interest was the MetaMuseum experimental project, a 3 month collaboration of 13 American museums and art institutions for the joint curation of digital exhibitions taking the form of a single Tumblr profile (Castro, 2013).

This short subchapter aimed at a practical view of what a carefully balanced engagement with IBMPs might seem like. Our following conclusions will summarize the findings of our research.

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The Instagram account of MoMA

The Pinterest account of the Met Museum

The Tumblr account of the “Metamuseum” experimental project

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS

Marshall McLuhan’s axioms have been applied to describe the impact of IBMPs generally in visual perception and specifically their implications upon museology. New technical means for communicating contents of the visual field had a tremendous impact on how humans - potential museum visitors - interact with what they see. The building up of the digital environments of platforms, has modified the appreciation of physical environments, to the extent that the latter can be seen as contents of the former, which can stand as constituting elements of one’s online identity construction. Lev Manovich’s “language of new media” leads museologists to rethink about their strict authoritative role and reconceptualize the museum’s actual authority via the appreciation of the digital features. Manovich’s arguments on the modularity, variability, and automation of new media objects has a serious impact on the shift of focus from the value of the exhibited object per se towards the meaning making process.

Various conceptual suggestions for the new form of the museum after the advent of new digital and online technologies have appeared in the literature, depending on each author’s perspective and focal point. The general message contained in contemporary media, though, is common throughout all of the various terminologies: the museum opens its doors and becomes widely connected with the public. Through the utilization of contemporary media, museums act as central cultural catalysts for simultaneous knowledge preservation, dissemination, and generation. Museologists and audiences tend to become parts of an organic and dynamic symmetrical relation, mutually benefitted from each other in the construction of their self-understanding.

Social media in museums invite for radical interdisciplinary collaboration of experts focused on the museological field which is by definition beyond strict disciplines. A general focus towards the power of the image is on the one hand observed, and on the other should be further promoted. Our world has been rapidly shifting from text-centered communications, to image-saturated environments. New technologies allowing circulation of informationally rich pictorial content have become integral parts of our everyday status, and by the same token this reality invites for the development of more sophisticated technologies which will maximize the quality and connectivity of images. This circular process can be summarized in the following scheme:

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At the current stage of our civilization, we encounter the popularization of connected mobile devices and image-based applications that have only recently become subjected to empirical analysis, investigation and interpretation. In this paper we have made efforts to approach the phenomenon of the multilayered perceptional shift in the visual field and its implications for contemporary museums. The literature mainly originated in museum and media studies. The key themes of exploration of this paper, as collected through the critical reflection on the related literature were:

 the prospects of transition from Web 1.0 to 2.0 as expressed in the post-museum context  the capabilities of widely used devices, their mobility, connectivity, and picture capturing functions  the power of the image, its direct and pluralistic nature  the decontextualization and recontextualization of online images

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 the need for development of special skills in curators and museologists for the integration of IBMPs in educational programs and the museum’s communication strategies, open to collaboration with other fields’ specialists and the audience.

As it was proposed, the study of the audience-museum relation through IBMPs might lead in very interesting observations about the current undergoing sociocultural modifications. This is the result of the simultaneous gathering of multiple stages of the knowledge lifecycle (generation, dissemination and preservation) in the museum’s environment, captured and circulated via mobile devices and IBMPs.

The museologist in the age after IBMPs should be ascribed the role of the meaning-making mediator. If indeed, IBMPs’ users become accustomed to an environment saturated with contextless images, the purpose of the museum should be augmented: it becomes the center for recontextualization, for contemplation and reflection upon cultural exhibits and for the cultivation of a growing visual literacy. Invitation for participation and collaboration in the museum experience will render literacy and knowledge a motivating and enjoyable practice.

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APPENDIX: EXTENDED ABSTRACT IN GREEK

Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες και η Επιρροή τους στην Οπτική Αντίληψη ως Καινοτομία στη Μουσειολογική Επιμέλεια

και Επικοινωνία

Εκτενής περίληψη της εργασίας ως συνοπτική παρουσίασή της στην Ελληνική γλώσσα.

Κεφάλαιο 1 Εισαγωγή

1.1 Πρόλογος και Ευχαριστίες

Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία έχει εκπονηθεί στο πλαίσιο εκπλήρωσης του Διαπανεπιστημιακού Προγράμματος Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών Μουσειολογίας – Διαχείρισης Πολιτισμού του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης. Το θέμα της συναποφασίστηκε κατόπιν συμφωνίας μεταξύ της συγγραφέως, της επιβλέπουσας καθηγήτριας και του εποπτικού συμβουλίου, για τη συμβολή των οποίων στη διεκπεραίωση της εργασίας δεν μπορώ παρά να είμαι ευγνώμων.

1.2 Στόχοι

Οι Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες (ΕΜΠ) αποτελούν online υπηρεσίες φιλοξενίας και διαδικτυακού διαμοιρασμού εικόνων. Σταδιακά μετατρέπονται σε αναπόσπαστο μέρος της καθημερινότητάς μας και καθώς παρατηρείται, ένα ολοένα και αυξανόμενο μέρος της μουσειολογικής βιβλιογραφίας ήδη έχει ξεκινήσει να μελετά τη σχέση των ΕΜΠ με το μουσείο. Οι στόχοι της παρούσας εργασίας είναι πολλαπλοί και σχετίζονται με την υφιστάμενη τροποποίηση της οπτικής αντίληψης στην τρέχουσα εποχή και σε μια νέα κατανόηση του μουσείου υπό αυτές τις συνθήκες. Αρχικά τοποθετούμε αυτές τις τεχνολογικές επιτεύξεις στο κατάλληλο συγκείμενο, ως μέρος της φιλοσοφίας του Δικτύου 2.0 (Web 2.0) και της εκ νέου θέσμισης της αυταρχικής μονομερούς διαφύλαξης γνωστικού περιεχομένου στη σχέση μουσείο- κοινό. Κατόπιν, παρουσιάζουμε τη φύση αυτών των εικονοκεντρικών πλατφορμών, παραθέτοντας υποδειγματικές περιπτώσεις τριών από τις πλέον δημοφιλείς πλατφόρμες, πιο συγκεκριμένα των πλατφορμών Tumblr, Pinterest και Instagram. Μέσω της μελέτης της σχετικής βιβλιογραφίας στοχεύουμε στην κριτική αβάσιμων τοποθετήσεων θεμελιωμένων σε ασταθείς και αστήρικτους υποθετικούς ισχυρισμούς σχετικούς με τις εικονικές δυνατότητες επισκεπτών και μουσείων που διαμεσολαβούνται από ΕΜΠ. Καταληκτικά, ο κυριότερος στόχος του παρόντος κειμένου

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είναι η κριτική σύνθεση ενός μουσειακού μοντέλου πρακτικής του οποίου η αξιοποίηση θα μεγιστοποιήσει το αμοιβαίο συμφέρον τόσο για το ίδιο το μουσείο όσο και για τον επισκέπτη. Έμφαση δίδεται στην επιρροή που ασκούν οι διαδικτυακές πλατφόρμες διαμοιρασμού εικόνων στην οπτική αντίληψη των χρηστών τους, δεδομένου του ότι τέτοιοι χρήστες αποτελούν δυνητικά μέλη του μουσειακού κοινού. Συνοψίζοντας, το κεντρικό μας ερευνητικό ερώτημα εξετάζει το ρόλο που διαδραματίζουν οι ΕΜΠ στην τροποποίηση της πρόσληψης οπτικών ερεθισμάτων και τις περαιτέρω επιπτώσεις της τροποποίησης αυτής στο μουσειολογικό πλαίσιο. Η διεξοδικότερη ανάπτυξη του εν λόγω θέματος συνάντησε δύο περιορισμούς: αφενός, το σχετικά μικρό χρονικό διάστημα ευρείας χρήσης των ΕΜΠ αποτρέπει την εξαγωγή περιεκτικών συμπερασμάτων σχετικών με τα μακροπρόθεσμα αποτελέσματά τους, και ως εκ τούτου η σχετική βιβλιογραφία παραμένει περιορισμένη αφετέρου.

1.3 Σκοπιμότητα

Η εργασία απευθύνεται κυρίως σε μουσειολόγους, μουσειακούς επιμελητές και υπευθύνους επικοινωνιακής διαχείρισης πολιτιστικών ιδρυμάτων που θα επωφελούνταν από μια ολιστική κατανόηση των τροπών της σύγχρονης οπτικής αντίληψης των δυνητικών επισκεπτών και της λειτουργικής επιρροής των εικονοκεντρικών μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης στην ανάπτυξη σύγχρονων μουσειολογικών στρατηγικών. Ανεξαρτήτως της υποχρεωτικώς διεπιστημονικής προσέγγισης της παρούσας έρευνας, το όλο εγχείρημα κατατάσσεται στο πεδίο της μουσειολογίας. Μολαταύτα, εξαιτίας της έμφασης στη φύση των διαδικτυακών πλατφορμών αντλούμε στοιχεία από το πεδίο της μελέτης των μέσων. Όπως προαναφέρθηκε, η σχετική βιβλιογραφία είναι περιορισμένη σε έκταση, οδηγώντας στο δανεισμό στοιχείων από γειτονικά πεδία για τη δόμηση συμπαγούς επιχειρηματολογίας. Τα αποτελέσματα αναμένεται να οδηγήσουν σε πρακτικές εφαρμογές εάν ληφθούν υπόψιν από επαγγελματίες μουσειολόγους, υπεύθυνους για την εγκαθίδρυση σχέσεων μεταξύ μουσείου και κοινού. Η αυθεντικότητα και η καινοτομία της εργασίας εντοπίζεται στην κάλυψη του βιβλιογραφικού κενού σχετικά με την ειδική μελέτη της επιρροής των εικονοκεντρικών μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης στη μουσειακή εμπειρία, ως αποτέλεσμα των τροποποιήσεων που υφίσταται η οπτική αντίληψη σε έναν περιβάλλον κορεσμένο από εικόνες.

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1.4 Μεθοδολογία

Η εργασία αποτελεί θεωρητική και εννοιολογική περιήγηση δομημένη κατόπιν βιβλιογραφικής επισκόπησης και κριτικού αναστοχασμού. Όπως ειπώθηκε ανωτέρω, έχουμε επιστρατεύσει θεωρίες προερχόμενες ή σχετιζόμενες τόσο από τη μελέτη των μουσείων όσο και των μέσων. Παρουσιάζοντας τα χαρακτηριστικά των ΕΜΠ, συμπεριλάβαμε συνοπτικά ορισμένα εμπειρικά στοιχεία ως βάση για την εφαρμογή των θεωρητικών εργαλείων.

1.5 Δομή της Εργασίας

Ο κορμός της εργασίας χωρίζεται σε τρία βασικά κεφάλαια. Το πρώτο παρουσιάζει τις ΕΜΠ τόσο ως παράγωγο των συνθηκών της ιστορικής και τεχνολογικής τους ανάδυσης, όσο και με βάση τα λειτουργικά τους χαρακτηριστικά, καταλήγοντας με τα ερευνητικά μας ερωτήματα που είναι: (α) τι είδους τροποποιήσεις επιφέρουν στην οπτική αντίληψη δυνητικών επισκεπτών μουσείων και (β) τι επιπτώσεις φαίνεται να έχει αυτό το φαινόμενο στο ρόλο και στο σκοπό των μουσείων και των μουσειολόγων. Το δεύτερο μέρος της εργασίας αποτελεί θεωρητική επισκόπηση της θεωρίας των μέσων – κλασικής και σύγχρονης – ως απόπειρα απάντησης στο πρώτο ερώτημα. Το τρίτο μέρος στοχεύει στην πραγματιστική παροχή απαντήσεων στο δεύτερο σκέλος του διερευνητικού ερωτήματος, τόσο εννοιολογικά όσο και με την παράθεση σύγχρονων υποδειγμάτων επιτυχούς αξιοποίησης ΕΜΠ σε μουσεία και καλλιτεχνικά ιδρύματα. Εν κατακλείδι, το τελευταίο, μικρής έκτασης, κεφάλαιο συνοψίζει τα ευρήματα της παρούσας εργασίας.

Κεφάλαιο 2 Εκδημοκρατισμός των Τεχνολογιών και η Ανάδυση των ΕΜΠ

2.1 Εισαγωγικές Παρατηρήσεις

Ο ανθρώπινος πολιτισμός πορεύεται δομώντας κοινωνίες που κάνουν χρήση πολλαπλών τεχνικών μέσων αναπαράστασης της κοινωνικής τους υπόστασης, με την οπτική αναπαράσταση να αποτελεί στο σήμερα το πλέον κυρίαρχο είδος. Η πλειονότητα των κοινωνικών φαινομένων σήμερα, φωτογραφίζεται και διαμοιράζεται διαδικτυακά. Αντικείμενα οπτικής αποτύπωσης και έκφρασης της σύγχρονης κοινωνίας αποτελούν προϊόν επικοινωνίας μέσω μιας πληθώρας μέσων κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, με κυριότερο αντιπροσωπευτικό είδος των τελευταίων, τις ΕΜΠ. Εξαρχής μπορεί να παρατηρηθεί μια αναλογία μεταξύ διαδικτυακών εργαλείων διατήρησης και διαμοιρασμού υλικού εικόνων,

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και των μουσείων, των ιδρυμάτων που ευθύνονται για την συντήρηση και παρουσίαση των αποτυπώσεων του ανθρώπινου πολιτισμού. Ο ολοένα αυξανόμενος όγκος ψηφιακού υλικού εικόνων και η επικράτηση των ΕΜΠ σε σχέση με πλατφόρμες που εστιάζουν σε άλλες μορφές επικοινωνίας (λ.χ. κειμενοκεντρικές ή ακουστικές), υπονοεί πολλαπλές παρατηρήσεις αναφορικά με την σύγχρονη ανάπτυξη της οπτικής αντίληψης των χρηστών τους. Όσο παρατηρούμε το πώς τείνουν οι χρήστες να “ανεβάζουν” στο διαδίκτυο τις οπτικές τους εμπειρίες, τόσο περισσότερο κατανοούμε το πώς προσλαμβάνουν τον τομέα του οπτικού. Καθώς οι χρήστες (ειδικά οι ηλικιακά νεότεροι) εξοικειώνονται με αυτήν τη νέα σχεσιακή τους δόμηση με το οπτικά αποτυπωμένο τους υλικό, το δυνητικό μουσειακό κοινό θα αναμένει από το μουσείο μια ευθυγράμμιση με το σύγχρονο οπτικό πολιτισμό, όπως αυτός διαμεσολαβείται κυρίως από ΕΜΠ. Η Οικονόμου έχει ήδη αναπτύξει διεξοδικά το γενικότερο ζήτημα της επιρροής νέων τεχνολογιών στα μουσεία, όπως οι Τεχνολογίες Πληροφορίας και Επικοινωνίας (ΤΠΕ) και πιο πρόσφατα των κινητών εφαρμογών δικτύωσης (επί παραδείγματι, Economou, 1998, Economou & Meintani, 2011, Tost & Economou, 2006).

Με βασικό μας εφαλτήριο σημείο αυτήν την παραδοχή, αποπειρόμαστε την εξέταση της επιρροής των εικονοκεντρικών διαδικτυακών εργαλείων εξίσου στη μουσειακή εμπειρία από πλευράς χρήστη/επισκέπτη, όσο και στον περαιτέρω ανασχηματισμό του ίδιου του μουσείου σύμφωνα με τη φύση των νέων μέσων. Η παρατήρηση πως οι ΕΜΠ τείνουν να γίνουν αναπόσπαστο μέρος της καθημερινότητας, μπορεί να ιδωθεί ως σημείο ανακατεύθυνσης της οντολογικής μας κατανόησης του εαυτού. Τα μουσεία πλέον αναπτύσσονται σε περιβάλλοντα ταχείας κίνησης και αλλαγής, όπου χρήστες κινητών τηλεφώνων συνδεδεμένων διαρκώς στο διαδίκτυο τείνουν να καταναλώνουν εικόνες με πολύ γρήγορους ρυθμούς με τη συνεχή χειρονομία του “scrolling down” στις οθόνες τους. Τα μουσεία οφείλουν να λάβουν υπόψιν αυτές τις συνθήκες και να είναι σε θέση να κατασκευάσουν μουσειακές εμπειρίες που θα καθιστούν σαφή την περιεκτικότητα και τον πλούτο των εκθεμάτων τους, ακόμα και εάν οι επισκέπτες δεν διαθέτουν αρκετό χρόνο για αναστοχασμό μπροστά από κάθε έκθεμα. Οι επισκέπτες του μουσείου, συνηθισμένοι πλέον στην αυτοματοποιημένη παροχή ανατροφοδότησης εξατομικευμένου υλικού, θα πρέπει να κινητοποιούνται στο μουσειακό χώρο με μεθοδεύσεις πλήρεις νοήματος τόσο για το περιεχόμενο του μουσείου, όσο και για τα δικά τους προσωπικά ενδιαφέροντα ( με τους τρόπους παραγωγής νοήματος στο μουσείο όπως περιγράφονται στους Hooper-Greenhill & Moussouri, 2001).

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2.2 Οι Πυλώνες του Εκδημοκρατισμού των Μέσων: Από τους Φύλακες της Τέχνης στους Κατόχους Έξυπνων Συσκευών

“Το άτομο του σύγχρονου πολιτισμού έρχεται κατά τη διάρκεια μίας ημέρας σε επαφή με περισσότερες κατασκευασμένες εικόνες απ' όσες κάποιος θα έβλεπε κατά τη διάρκεια ολόκληρου του βίου του πριν λίγους αιώνες” (Feigenson & Spiesel, στο Porter, 2014, σ. 1699). Αυτό συμβαίνει ως αποτέλεσμα μιας διαδικασίας τεχνολογικού εκδημοκρατισμού που επιτρέπει ταυτόχρονα: (α) τη φωτογραφική αποτύπωση εμπειριών σε υψηλή ανάλυση, (β) την εγγραματοσύνη πάνω σε θέματα φωτογραφικής επεξεργασίας και (γ) την αυξανόμενη διαθεσιμότητα εικόνων μέσω της ανάπτυξης πλατφορμών σε συνδυασμό με τη διαδικτυακή συνδεσιμότητα. Λίγα μόλις χρόνια μετά την ίδρυση του δημοφιλούς μέσου κοινωνικής δικτύωσης Facebook, στη βάση δεδομένων του φιλοξενούνταν είκοσι εκατομμύρια εικόνες. Το έτος 2011 είχε υπολογιστεί ότι τραβήχτηκαν ογδόντα δισεκατομμύρια ψηφιακές φωτογραφίες. Όπως προβλέπει ο Carr “η ιστορία του Ιστού συστήνει πως η ταχύτητα αύξησης δεδομένων μόνο θα επιταχύνεται” (2011). Παράλληλα, το οικονομικό κόστος απόκτησης συσκευών παραγωγής και αναπαραγωγής ψηφιακών εικόνων ολοένα και χαμηλώνει – γεγονός που σηματοδοτεί τον εκδημοκρατισμό των μέσων από οικονομική άποψη.

Στο λειτουργικό του σκέλος, ο εκδημοκρατισμός λαμβάνει χώρα μέσω του ανοίγματος στη χρήση εργαλείων κατασκευής ψηφιακών αντικειμένων. Αυτή η διαδικασία σηματοδοτείται από την εξέλιξη του φαινομένου του Δικτύου 2.0. Η φιλοσοφία του Δικτύου 2.0, ως ξεπέρασμα του κεντρικού ελέγχου διαδικτυακών πόρων πριν το 2000, είναι η έκφραση της ανάγκης για επαναξιολόγηση της εξουσίας των ειδικών πάνω σε θέματα που άπτονται της πνευματικής κριτικής του κοινού – οδηγώντας σε διαδικτυακά περιβάλλοντα συλλογικής συμμετοχικότητας στα “κοινά”, αντικαθιστώντας την κεντρικώς ελεγχόμενη δόμηση της γνώσης (όπως στην περίπτωση αντικατάστασης μεγάλων στατικών εγκυκλοπαιδειών από τη συνεχώς ανανεώσιμη Βικιπαίδεια, και την ανάπτυξη “φολκσονομιών”, εφαρμογής της “σοφίας του πλήθους” στην καλύτερη δυνατή περιγραφή των ψηφιακών αναπαραστάσεων του πολιτισμού, O'Reilly, 2008).

Οι Arora & Vermelyen τοποθετούν τα ερωτήματα που θέτει το Δίκτυο 2.0 στο πλαίσιο της τέχνης και των καλλιτεχνικών διαμεσολαβητών και ειδικών: “Καταργούν άραγε τα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης τις απαρχαιωμένες ιεραρχίες εισάγοντας τον παιγνιώδη τομέα στην αξιολόγηση της τέχνης;” (2013, σ. 195). Αντιμετωπίζουν την ιστορική πορεία της τέχνης από

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το 17ο αιώνα κι έπειτα ως μια διαδικασία αμφισβήτησης της τότε εγκαθίδρυσης των ειδικών της τέχνης. Το πέρασμα από τον τότε έμπορο-ειδικό τέχνης στον 20ό αιώνα σημαδεύτηκε από την ανάπτυξη του καλλιτεχνικού επιμελητή και του ιστορικού τέχνης. Σε γενικές γραμμές οφείλουμε να σημειώσουμε πως η εξουσία αυτών των ειδικών τείνει σήμερα να αμφισβητείται, μολαταύτα όμως, η αξία τους παραμένει, απλώς επανασημασιοδοτείται. Αυτό που πιθανώς όντως λαμβάνει χώρα μετά την προέλαση του διαδικτύου, όπως σημειώνουν και οι δύο συγγραφείς, είναι το ξεπέρασμα της αξίας της πηγής του έργου τέχνης (του δημιουργού), ακολουθούμενο από έμφαση στην οντολογία του περιεχομένου του: “αυτό που λέγεται μετρά περισσότερο από το ποιός το λέει” (ό.π., σ. 204). Γι' αυτούς, λοιπόν, τα νέα μέσα και εργαλεία του Δικτύου 2.0 λειτουργούν καταλυτικά υποσκελίζοντας “πληροφοριακές ασυμμετρίες” και προωθώντας μια αμεσότερη κατασκευή του καλλιτεχνικού κόσμου που αμφισβητεί την αυταρχικότητα του παραδοσιακού διαμεσολαβητή. Επ' ουδενί λόγο όμως δεν υποσκελίζεται η αξία του καλλιτεχνικού και μουσειακού επιμελητή, του οποίου ο ρόλος, όπως θα δούμε, απλώς επαναξιολογείται με θετικό πρόσημο και έχει να κάνει με την ενίσχυση και αναγνώρισή του ως παιδαγωγού και συνδετικού κρίκου μεταξύ κοινού και αποπλαισιωμένων εικονικών ερεθισμάτων.

2.3 Μουσείο 2.0

Ο όρος “Μουσείο 2.0”, επινοημένος από τη Nina Simon, δηλώνει το όραμά της για ένα συμμετοχικό μουσείο ευθυγραμμισμένο με τις προσδοκίες του Δικτύου 2.0. Θεωρούμε πως η αξιοποίηση των νέων τεχνολογικών μέσων στο πνεύμα του Δικτύου 2.0 στο μουσειακό περιβάλλον έρχεται σε συμφωνία με τα γενικότερα προτάγματα της ηθικής αξίας του μουσείου όπως αυτά συνοψίζονται στη δεοντολογία της Διεθνούς Επιτροπής Μουσείων (ICOM) κατά την οποία: “τα μουσεία διαθέτουν τη σημαντική υποχρέωση της ανάπτυξης του εκπαιδευτικού τους ρόλου και της προσέλκυσης ποικίλων μελών της κοινωνίας, του τόπου ή της ομάδας που εξυπηρετούν. Η αλληλεπίδραση με τα συστατικά μέρη της κοινωνίας και η προώθηση της κληρονομιάς της αποτελεί αναπόσπαστο μέρος του εκπαιδευτικού ρόλου του μουσείου” (χ.χ.). Αξιοποιώντας αυτόν τον κανόνα, θα λέγαμε πως προκειμένου τα μουσεία να προσελκύσουν μέλη της κοινωνίας εξοικειωμένα με τις νέες οπτικές τεχνολογίες, οφείλουν να ενσωματώσουν τα χαρακτηριστικά των διαδικτυακών εικονοκεντρικών πλατφορμών στη γενικότερη πολιτική σχεδιασμού τους.

Η εξής υβριδική επαναξιολόγηση τείνει να γίνεται ορατή μεταξύ των χαρακτηριστικών του μουσείου και του διαδικτύου. Παραδοσιακά το μουσείο συσχετιζόταν με τη στατική

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διατήρηση της πολιτισμικής κληρονομιάς και το διαδίκτυο εξέφραζε μια διαρκή τάση δυναμικής αναπροσαρμογής και ανανέωσης περιεχομένων. Σταδιακά, οι μουσειολογικές τάσεις ξεπερνούν τον τομέα της συντήρησης, και στο σύγχρονο σχεδιασμό εκθέσεων διαφαίνεται η προσπάθεια παρουσίασης καινοτόμων μουσειολογικών σκεπτικών, ενώ το διαδίκτυο χρησιμοποιείται ολοένα και συχνότερα ως αποθετήριο διάσωσης ψηφιοποιημένου υλικού (όπως τα διαδικτυακά ιδρυματικά καταθετήρια, το Archive.org, ή το φαινόμενο του “cloud”). Ο σαφής διαχωρισμός ψηφιακών και φυσικών περιβαλλόντων τείνει να γίνεται όλο και πιο δύσκολα διαβλέψιμος και, ενώ στις απαρχές του διαδικτύου ένα όραμα για “ψηφιοποίηση των πάντων” αποτελούσε κυρίαρχη τάση, μια σύγχρονη επιστροφή στη φυσική υπόσταση των πραγμάτων αποδεικνύει την κοινή αξία και των δύο πραγματικοτήτων. Τα μουσεία οφείλουν να χρησιμοποιήσουν τα ψηφιακά μέσα προς επίρρωση της φυσικής και εννοιολογικής τους αξίας.

2.4 Εικονοκεντρικές Μικροϊστολογικές Πλατφόρμες

Στο κεφάλαιο αυτό παρουσιάζονται οι ΕΜΠ επεξηγηματικά και λειτουργικά μέσα από παραδείγματα. Μετά την εξέταση του τι ακριβώς εννοείται με τις έννοιες “πλατφόρμα” και “μικροϊστολόγιο”, παρουσιάζουμε τις λειτουργίες τριών αντιπροσωπευτικών ΕΜΠ, των πλέον δημοφιλών και συχνών στη χρήση από μουσεία – των Tumblr, Instagram και Pinterest. Κατόπιν εξετάζουμε εμπειρικά τις λειτουργίες τους επιστρατεύοντας ένα συγκεκριμένο παράδειγμα και διανθίζοντας την περιγραφή με εικόνες από τη διεπαφή με τις ΕΜΠ προς εξοικείωση του αναγνώστη με το εικονικό αυτό περιβάλλον. Τέλος, παραθέτουμε ορισμένα στοιχεία συμπεριφοράς χρηστών ΕΜΠ που στέκονται ως πρώτα στοιχεία της τροποποιημένης αντίληψης εξαιτίας της πρότερης γνώσης ύπαρξης των ΕΜΠ και των δυνατοτήτων χρήσης τους.

2.4.1 Πλατφόρμες

Η χρήση της λέξης “πλατφόρμα” στα νέα μέσα ακολουθεί το παράδειγμα εκ νέου σημασιοδότησης που έχουν λάβει πολλές λέξεις μετά την έλευση του διαδικτύου, όπως οι “δίκτυο”, “ακολουθώ”, “φίλος”, και άλλες. Όπως σημειώνει ο Gillespie (2010), ο όρος “πλατφόρμα” δηλώνει τις διαδικτυακές υπηρεσίες διαμεσολαβητών περιεχομένων που δικτυώνουν δημόσιες ανταλλαγές απόψεων και αγαθών, μεταξύ οργανισμών, μεμονωμένων χρηστών και ομάδων. Για τον Gillespie, οι πλατφόρμες είναι ταυτοχρόνως υπολογιστικές (ακολουθούν τους κανόνες προγραμματισμού επιτρέποντας τη σύνθεση κωδίκων πάνω σε προϋπάρχοντα υλικά), πολιτικές (ως ανοιχτός “χώρος” έκφρασης απόψεων), ιδεαλιστικές (ανοίγοντας ένα μεταφυσικό πεδίο μεταξύ παροντικών συνθηκών

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και μελλοντικών δυνητικοτήτων) και αρχιτεκτονικές (αφήνοντας κάθε χρήστη να “χτίσει” πάνω σε μια συγκεκριμένη δομή αφιερωμένη σε έναν ή περισσότερους σκοπούς).

2.4.2 Μικροϊστολόγια: Θεωρητική Περιγραφή και Εμπειρική Παρουσίαση Τριών Αντιπροσωπευτικών Πλατφορμών

Η ιδέα του ιστολογίου, ξεκινώντας στα τέλη της δεκαετίας του 1990, δηλώνει μια ιστοσελίδα η οποία είναι δυνητικά διαρκώς ανανεώσιμη από υλικό καταγραφής νέων εμπειριών με τη μορφή ενός οιονεί ημερολογίου. Η καταγραφή ιστολογίου έχει αποτελέσει μια δημοφιλή πρακτική, η οποία προσφάτως τείνει να υποκατασταθεί από την καταγραφή εμπειριών στα καλούμενα μικροϊστολόγια που καλούν σε συντομότερες και λακωνικότερες καταγραφές εμπειριών, όπως το Twitter που διαθέτει περιορισμό στον αριθμό χαρακτήρων κάθε δημοσίευσης. Έτσι εκφράζεται, θα λέγαμε, η ανάγκη για αμεσότερη και συντομότερη ενημέρωση (Ebner & Schiefner, 2008, σ. 156, Java κ.ά., 2007, σ. 56) . Στο πέρασμα της κυριαρχίας από το κείμενο στην εικόνα, παρατηρούμε την ανάδυση των εικονοκεντρικών μικροϊστολογίων, με πιο δημοφιλή και χαρακτηριστικά τα Tumblr, Instagram και Pinterest (Baer, 2014).

Στην παρουσίασή τους στην εργασία μας συμπεριλάβαμε τα χαρακτηριστικά των λειτουργιών τους και αποσπάσματα συνεντεύξεων χρηστών τους που δικαιολογούν την επιλογή της χρήσης τους. Για μια πληρέστερη κατανόηση των τρόπων λειτουργίας τους, εντάξαμε ένα παράδειγμα έρευνας ως εμπειρική επισκόπηση των λειτουργιών. Επιλέξαμε να αναζητήσουμε οπτικό υλικό με βάση τον Ιάπωνα φωτογράφο Shomei Tomatsu. Η επιλογή του εν λόγω παραδείγματος δικαιολογείται εκτενώς στο κυρίως σώμα. Εδώ ενδεικτικά αναφέρουμε το ότι αποτελεί ένα παράδειγμα αρκετά κοντά στην οπτική αναπαράσταση μουσειακών συνθηκών (εφόσον το μεγαλύτερο μέρος των διαθέσιμων εικόνων προέρχονται από εκθέσεις του φωτογράφου) και έτσι μένουμε πιστοί στη σκοπιμότητα της εργασίας, το περιεχόμενο των εικόνων ως αρκετά πλουραλιστικό παρέχει κίνητρο στους επισκέπτες να εκφράσουν τους τρόπους σκέψης που τους υποβάλει η προηγούμενη γνώση της ύπαρξης ΕΜΠ και τέλος, το παράδειγμα είναι αρκετά ευρύ ώστε να υπάρχει αρκετό και ετερογενές υλικό προς αξιολόγηση, αλλά και αρκετά περιορισμένο προκειμένου να αποφευχθεί ένα συμπίλημα εννοιολογικών εφαπτόμενων νοηματοδοτήσεων. Επισημαίνουμε ότι στόχος της παρουσίασης των ενδεικτικών αυτών πλατφορμών δεν είναι η σύγκρισή τους, αλλά η εξοικείωση του ενδιαφερόμενου μουσειολόγου με τα δημοφιλή αυτά μέσα. Σε κάθε περίπτωση, η δομή και των τριών είναι αρκετά παρόμοια, κάτι που διαφαίνεται και μέσα από την εμπειρική τους χρήση. Η προτίμηση κάποιας αντί μιας άλλης εναπόκειται στη

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προσωπική αισθητική του κάθε χρήστη.

2.5 Επικοινωνώντας Εικόνες μέσω ΕΜΠ στο Πλαίσιο του Μουσείου

Μετά την παρουσίαση των ΕΜΠ, εξετάζουμε τις συμπεριφορές χρηστών τους, όπως αυτές έχουν διατυπωθεί βιβλιογραφικά από τους Weilenmann, Hillman, & Jungselius (2011) σε μουσειακό περιβάλλον. Οι παρατηρήσεις τους έχουν να κάνουν αποκλειστικά με χρήστες του Instagram, αλλά θεωρούμε πως μπορούν να διατυπωθούν ως έχουν και για τις υπόλοιπες πλατφόρμες, εξαιτίας της κοινής δομής των τριών.

2.5.1 Η Επιρροή των ΕΜΠ στη Συμπεριφορά των Χρηστών τους

Οι παρατηρήσεις τους έχουν να κάνουν με μέριμνες που απασχολούν τους χρήστες πριν τη λήψη και το διαμοιρασμό μιας εικόνας και με τις ακόλουθες στρατηγικές διοχέτευσης του υλικού τους στα προσωπικά δίκτυα του κάθε χρήστη, σύμφωνα με τα αισθητικά και αισθηματικά τους κριτήρια. Αυτό που παρατηρείται κυρίως είναι πως η διαρκής ενασχόληση με τις ΕΜΠ συμβάλλει στη διαδικασία θέσμισης ταυτότητας, η οποία όμως ταυτοχρόνως τείνει να καταρρακωθεί στο πλαίσιο της μαζικής ανάδευσης διαφόρων πτυχών του εαυτού στη συνολική αναπαράσταση κάποιου μέσα από μια πλατφόρμα.

2.5.2 ΕΜΠ ως Παράγοντες Επιρροής: Η Υπόθεση της Μη-Ανθρώπινης Ευθύνης και οι Επιπτώσεις της

Το καταληκτικό υποκεφάλαιο του δεύτερου κεφαλαίου θέτει το ερώτημα ποια είναι εν τέλει η επιρροή των ΕΜΠ στην οπτική αντίληψη των χρηστών τους και εάν πρέπει να ληφθεί στα σοβαρά η πρόταση ορισμένων μελετητών για μη-ανθρώπινο παράγοντα ευθύνης εκ μέρους των πλατφορμών, θέση που στοχεύουμε να καταρρίψουμε στο επόμενο κεφάλαιο. Αναζητούνται τα κατάλληλα μεθοδολογικά εργαλεία και επιστρέφουμε στο κεντρικό ερώτημα της θέσης του μουσείου και του μουσειολόγου στη διαδικασία της διαμόρφωσης αντιλήψεων μετά την έλευση των ΕΜΠ.

Κεφάλαιο 3 Θεωρητικό Υπόβαθρο και Μεθοδολογία: Νέα Μέσα και η Εκθεσιακή Προσέγγιση στις ΕΜΠ για τον Ανασχηματισμό του Μουσείου

Όπως σημειώνει ο Τζώνος, η θεωρητική και η εφαρμοσμένη μουσειολογία αποτελούν κλάδους που συντίθενται θεωρητικά με δυσκολία μεταξύ τους και πως το επιστρατεύσιμο θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο μουσειολογικών θεμάτων οφείλει να προέρχεται από διεπιστημονικά πεδία, παίρνοντας τη μορφή ενός “patchwork” που οδηγεί σε μια ολιστική εικόνα του

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αντικειμένου (2013, σ. 64-65). Πρόκειται για ένα υφαντό θεωριών που αξιοποιούμε για τον κριτικό αναστοχασμό πάνω στα προαναφερθέντα στοιχεία παρατηρήσεων για τις ΕΜΠ που θα μας οδηγήσουν σε μια συνεπή κατεύθυνση απάντησης στα ερωτήματά μας. Μέσω μιας πρόσμιξης στοιχείων της θεωρίας των μέσων (McLuhan, 1964), των νέων μέσων (Manovich, 2001) και της κριτικής της “εκθεσιακής προσέγγισης” στις πλατφόρμες του Hogan, καταλήγουμε σε μια πληρέστερη εικόνα του ζητήματος και είμαστε έτοιμοι να προβούμε στο καταληκτικό τέταρτο κεφάλαιο.

3.1 McLuhan και το Μήνυμα του Μέσου

Ο ιδρυτής του κλάδου της μελέτης των μέσων, Marshall McLuhan (1964), έχει συνοψίσει στα ρητά του πολύτιμες παρατηρήσεις για την επίδραση κάθε είδους μέσου στον άνθρωπο. Συνοπτικά τα παραθέτουμε: (α) “Το μέσο είναι το μήνυμα”, εννοώντας πως το εκάστοτε μεταβλητό περιεχόμενο ενός μέσου είναι ελάχιστης σημασίας στη μελέτη του μέσου, αντίθετα με το γενικότερο “μήνυμα” που φέρει η δομή του μέσου στην επίδρασή του στο περιβάλλον. (β) “Κάθε μέσο αποτελεί προέκταση κάποιου μέλους ή λειτουργίας του ανθρωπίνου σώματος” επιδρώντας έτσι καταλυτικά στην σχέση του ανθρώπου με αυτό το μέλος του – εάν, λοιπόν, οι ΕΜΠ αποτελούν προέκταση της ανθρώπινης λειτουργίας της όρασης, τότε η σχέση μας με την όραση είναι υπό διαμόρφωση όσο χρησιμοποιούμε τις ΕΜΠ. (γ) Κατ' επέκταση, “Διαμορφώνουμε τα μέσα μας και τα μέσα μας διαμορφώνουν εμάς”, δηλαδή μετά την πάροδο ενός σεβαστού χρονικού διαστήματος και την εξοικείωση του ανθρώπινου πολιτισμού στη χρήση εκδημοκρατισμένων μέσων, ο πολιτισμός έχει διαμορφωθεί βάσει του “μηνύματος του μέσου”, με κύρια παραδείγματα την εξοικείωση των ανθρώπων με μέσα όπως το τηλέφωνο, ο ηλεκτρισμός, η τυπογραφία, το αεροπλάνο κ.ο.κ.

3.2 Lev Manovich, η Γλώσσα των Νέων Μέσων και η Υβριδική Μετακωδικοποιητική Φύση Χρηστών, Πλατφορμών και Αντικειμένων

Τα αξιώματα του McLuhan, αν και πολύ χρήσιμα για μια πρώτη αρχή κατανόησης του γεγονότος ότι οι ΕΜΠ επιδρούν στον οπτικό πολιτισμό, δεν προσφέρουν κάποιο στοιχείο για το πώς επιδρούν πάνω μας. Η γλώσσα των νέων μέσων του Manovich (2001) αποτελεί έναν περιεκτικό οδηγό κατανόησης της επιρροής που ασκούν τα νέα ψηφιακά μέσα βάσει των χαρακτηριστικών τους. Σκοπός του συγγραφέα δεν είναι τόσο η ανάδειξη της επιρροής που τα μέσα ασκούν, ωστόσο η εντρύφηση στα χαρακτηριστικά τους μπορεί να οδηγήσει σε μια πιο ολιστική κατανόηση του πώς τα ψηφιακά νέα οπτικά μέσα επηρεάζουν την οπτική αντίληψη εκτός ή εντός του μουσείου. Ο Manovich διαχωρίζει ανάμεσα στα ακόλουθα

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πέντε αξιώματα των νέων μέσων: Όπως σημειώνει, δεν είναι απαραίτητο κάθε νέο μέσο να είναι φορέας όλων αυτών των γνωρισμάτων, αλλά οπωσδήποτε όσα περισσότερα από αυτά είναι εμφανή τόσο τείνει το εκάστοτε μέσο να επικυρώνει την καινοτόμο του φύση.

(α) Αριθμητική αναπαράσταση: κάθε αντικείμενο παραγόμενο από νέα μέσα αποτελεί μια πλήρως διακριτή ύπαρξη, εντελώς αποκομμένη από οποιαδήποτε πηγή. Συναντώντας μια φωτογραφία σε μια πλατφόρμα, τα όποια αισθήματα αυτή εγείρει έχουν μηδενική σχέση με την πηγή και με τις συνθήκες που τη δημιούργησαν. (β) Διάρθρωση (ή η φρακταλοειδής δομή των νέων μέσων): τα ψηφιακά αντικείμενα δεν αλλάζουν την ταυτότητά τους και τη φύση τους εάν συμπεριληφθούν για τη διάρθρωση και συναρμογή νέων συγκειμένων και για την εκπλήρωση συγκεκριμένων στόχων. Επίσης, ο τρόπος διάρθρωσης των περιεχομένων ενός μέσου δεν αλλάζει τη δομή του μέσου, εκτός από την περίπτωση διαγραφής λειτουργικών μερών. Η αξιοποίηση μιας ψηφιακής εικόνας για διάφορους στόχους δεν της στερεί τη δυναμική της ως εικόνα. Μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί ξανά και ξανά σύμφωνα με τις επιταγές του κάθε χρήστη. (γ) Αυτοματισμός: δεδομένου ότι τα νέα μέσα λειτουργούν με τη χρήση αυτοματοποιημένων συστημάτων, άπαξ και ένα αντικείμενο γίνει προϊόν ενός νέου μέσου, είναι εύκολο να χαθεί οποιοσδήποτε έλεγχος πάνω σε αυτό από μεριάς του δημιουργού, μιας και θα γίνει αριθμητικά αναπαριστώμενο. Μια φωτογραφία διαθέσιμη στο διαδίκτυο χάνει απευθείας το συγκείμενό της και το μέλλον της αποτελεί τυχαίο προϊόν του αυτοματισμού. (δ) Μεταβλητότητα: σε αντίθεση με τα δύσκολα στην αντιγραφή και αναπαραγωγή παραδοσιακά μέσα, τα νέα αντικείμενα είναι ευκόλως αντιγράψιμα, ενώ δύνανται να υπάρξουν σε πολλαπλές διαφορετικές εκδοχές. Μια εικόνα μπορεί να υπάρχει διαθέσιμη για αντιγραφή από έναν πάροχο σε πολλά διαφορετικά μεγέθη, με παραλλαγές χρώματος, κλπ. (ε) Μετακωδικοποίηση: Απηχώντας τον McLuhan, αυτό το αξίωμα διαβλέπει πως υπάρχει μια διαλεκτική σχέση μεταξύ κοινωνικών ανθρώπινων κωδίκων οι οποίοι τείνουν να μετακωδικοποιούνται κατά την ψηφιοποίηση σε υπολογιστικούς κώδικές, των οποίων τα τελικά αποτελέσματα (πχ οι ψηφιακές αναπαραστάσεις σε μια οθόνη) τείνουν με τη σειρά τους να μετακωδικοποιούνται σε ανανεωμένους κοινωνικούς κώδικες. Μέσω και αυτού του αξιώματος επιβεβαιώνεται η επίδραση που ασκούν όλα τα ανωτέρω στον άνθρωπο και που ο μουσειολόγος οφείλει να λαμβάνει υπόψιν στη σχέση που χτίζει και τροφοδοτεί μεταξύ μουσείου, εκθεμάτων και κοινού.

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3.3 Η Εκθεσιακή Προσέγγιση στις ΕΜΠ, Μη-Ανθρώπινη Επιμέλεια και η Κατάρρευση Συγκειμένου

Αυτό το κεφάλαιο αποτελεί την παρουσίαση της θεωρίας του Hogan (2010) για την εκθεσιακή του προσέγγιση στις ΕΜΠ, την υπόθεσή του ότι προτεραιότητα λαμβάνει η μη- ανθρώπινη αλγοριθμική επιμέλεια στη σχέση ανθρώπων και εικόνων και πώς αυτό οδηγεί στην κατάρρευση των συγκειμένων. Η θεώρηση του Hogan αν και χαίρει δημοτικότητας τείνουμε να υποστηρίζουμε ότι διαθέτει αρκετά κενά τα οποία όμως δίνουν αφορμή για τον αναστοχασμό του επόμενου κεφαλαίου. Ο Hogan χρησιμοποιεί μια ευθεία αναλογία μεταξύ έκθεσης και ΕΜΠ, εκθεμάτων και εικόνων, επιμελητών εκθέσεων και αλγορίθμων. Βασιζόμενος σε αυτήν την κατά τη γνώμη μας αστήρικτη και επιφανειακή πρόταση, εξάγει πολλά συμπεράσματα για την επίδραση του μη-ανθρώπινου παράγοντα στον πολιτισμό, αφήνοντας όμως κατά μέρος τη ρεαλιστική επιστροφή στην υλικότητα που συνεχώς λαμβάνει χώρα. Το πλέον αξιόλογο κατά την κρίση μας συμπέρασμά του είναι αυτό που δανείζεται από τον boyd, σχετικά με την κατάρρευση συγκειμένων – κάτι που σε κάθε περίπτωση υπήρχε ήδη ως εύρημα από την προηγούμενή μας ανάλυση. Η θεώρησή του παρόλα αυτά, μας δίνει την αφορμή για μια έντονη κριτική παρόμοιων αβάσιμων υποθέσεων και την απαρχή του επόμενου κύριου κεφαλαίου που δίνει την οριστική απάντηση στα ερωτήματά μας.

Κεφάλαιο 4 Το Υπό Κατάρρευση Ψηφιακό Μουσείο και η Δύναμη της Εικόνας: Συζητώντας Μουσειολογικές Στρατηγικές Επικοινωνίας μετά τις ΕΜΠ

Το κεφάλαιο αυτό χωρίζεται σε τρία εκτενέστερα υποκεφάλαια και ένα τέταρτο σύντομο συμπλήρωμα.

4.1 Η Επαναφορά του Φυσικού: Είναι το Ψηφιακό Μουσείο Νεκρό;

Το πρώτο υποκεφάλαιο πραγματεύεται τον αποχαιρετισμό των εν τέλει αυθαίρετων θεωριών και απραγματοποίητων υποθέσεων που οραματίζονταν σε παρόμοιες εννοιολογικές αποχρώσεις με τον Hogan την ανάδυση και υπερίσχυση του Ψηφιακού έναντι του φυσικού μουσείου (Bowen, 2000). Εξετάζουμε επίσης αρκετές ενδιαφέρουσες προσπάθειες κατασκευής ψηφιακών μουσείων (ειδικά και περιπτώσεις ψηφιακών μουσείων που χρησιμοποιούν απτικά μέσα), οι οποίες προσπάθειες όμως εξακολουθούν να παραμένουν σε πιλοτικά στάδια μιας και τόσο οι οικονομικοί όσο και οι ανθρώπινοι πόροι

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δεν επαρκούν για την κάλυψη της σταθερής ανάπτυξης και λειτουργίας τους (Swartout κ.ά., 2010, Asano κ.ά., 2005, Carrozzino & Bergamasco, 2010, Sylaiou κ.ά., 2009). Όπως αποδεικνύει η ιστορία είκοσι-πέντε πλέον χρόνων από την ανάδυση του διαδικτύου, το φυσικό όχι μόνο δεν έχει αντικατασταθεί από το ψηφιακό, αλλά αντιθέτως ενισχύθηκε μέσω της ενσωμάτωσης στην καθημερινότητα των ψηφιακών στοιχείων που αποτέλεσαν χρήσιμα εργαλεία (Steyeri, στο Aranda, Wood & Vidokle, 2015, p. 11).

4.2 Η Πραγματική Επιρροή των ΕΜΠ στην Οπτική Αντίληψη των Χρηστών τους: Εικόνες, Συνδεσιμότητα και η Πορεία προς την Εικονοκεντρική Εγγραματοσύνη

Το δεύτερο υποκεφάλαιο αποτελεί μια ενδελεχή εξέταση των επιχειρημάτων για την άμεση δύναμη της εικόνας, γεγονός που στέκεται ως βασικό επιστέγασμα της επεξήγησης της δημοτικότητας των ΕΜΠ και των λόγων για τους οποίους το μουσείο οφείλει να εντάξει τις ΕΜΠ στις στρατηγικές επικοινωνίας του. Αντλώντας επιχειρηματολογία από την αναλυτική υπεράσπιση της δύναμης της εικόνας σε νομικά-αποδεικτικά πλαίσια από την Porter (2013) και από διάφορες άλλες πηγές μουσειολογικών μελετών και μελετών μέσων και οπτικής αντίληψης καταλήγουμε πως το προβληματικό σημείο της κατάρρευσης του συγκειμένου μπορεί να ιδωθεί και ως εφαλτήριο για την επαφή με την εγγενή δυναμική της εικόνας. Έτσι, απομένει στο μουσειολόγο-επιμελητή να αναλάβει το νέο του ρόλο στο μουσείο ως παιδαγωγός της επαναπλαισίωσης της εικόνας.

4.3 Ενσωματώνοντας το Μοντέλο Πολλοί-προς-Πολλούς μέσω των ΕΜΠ στο Μουσείο: Επικοινωνιακές Στρατηγικές και Αναπτυσσόμενες Δεξιότητες

Το παρόν κεφάλαιο αποτελεί την κύρια πρακτική συμβολή της εργασίας στη μουσειολογική κοινότητα παραθέτοντας το μουσειολογικό μοντέλο που βασίζεται στη φύση των νέων μέσων και της φιλοσοφίας του Δικτύου 2.0 για την ένταξη νέων κοινοτήτων στο μουσείο. Οι Russo κ.ά. (2006, 2007) αναλύουν διεξοδικά τα θετικά και τα αρνητικά στοιχεία της εφαρμογής νέων μέσων δικτύωσης στα μουσεία και αναγνωρίζουν την αναγκαιότητα προσεκτικής και σωστά μελετημένης ένταξης αυτών των μέσων στα μουσεία, εφαρμόζοντας το κατάλληλο μοντέλο πολλών προς πολλούς για το διαμοιρασμό της γνώσης. Σε αυτό το μοντέλο, οι συγγραφείς αποδέχονται την κοινή συνισταμένη τόσο του κοινού όσο και του μουσειολόγου στην αποτύπωση της γνώσης στο πλαίσιο του Μουσείου 2.0, σε αντίθεση με τα άλλα δύο μοντέλα μουσειακής γνώσης, αυτά του χρήστη προς χρήστη και του ενός προς

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πολλούς. Οι ίδιοι, καθώς και οι Stuedahl & Lowe (2013) και Drotner & Schrøder (2014) καταδεικνύουν και κάποιες πιθανές αρνητικές συνέπειες της χρήσης των νέων μέσων στα μουσεία, όπως η πιθανή παραχάραξη πνευματικών δικαιωμάτων ή η υποταγή του μουσείου σε τακτικές ποσοτικών έναντι ποιοτικών αξιολογήσεων, άκρως δημοφιλών στο διαδίκτυο, όπως το κέρδος βάση αριθμού “κλικ”, επισκέψεων σελίδας και “likes”. Οι περιεκτικοί De Rijcke & Beaulieu (2011) αναγνωρίζουν εν τέλει τις δυναμικές της εικόνας και αξιολογούν σωστά την αξιοποίησή τους από πλευράς μουσειολόγων για την εγκαθίδρυση σχέσεων με το νεαρό κοινό. Δεδομένου του ότι η εικόνα από μόνη της είναι άμεση και ελκυστική, οι μηχανισμοί που μεσολαβούν για τη συνεχή προώθηση εικόνων δεν μπορούν παρά να είναι εξίσου ελκυστικοί. Εάν, λοιπόν, το μουσείο στοχεύει στην προσέλκυση κοινού, οφείλει οπωσδήποτε να συμπεριλάβει τις ΕΜΠ στις στρατηγικές του.

4.4 Αποτελεσματική Αξιοποίηση ΕΜΠ από Μουσεία: Ορισμένα Παραδείγματα

Το σύντομο αυτό συμπληρωματικό κεφάλαιο προσκαλεί τον αναγνώστη να ενημερωθεί για τους τρόπους και τις μεθόδους αξιοποίησης από πλευράς μεγάλων μουσείων των ΕΜΠ. Τα παραδείγματα δίνουν έμφαση στο Μουσείο Andy Warhol στο Πίτσμπεργκ της Πενσιλβάνια, και στο Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) τα οποία είναι ιδιαιτέρως ενεργά και ευρηματικά και στις τρεις υποδειγματικές ΕΜΠ. Παραθέτουμε και άλλες αξιόλογες περιπτώσεις πρωτότυπης αξιοποίησης ΕΜΠ όπως στα ακόλουθα μουσεία και ιδρύματα τέχνης: National Design Museum (Smithsonian Institution), Powerhouse Museum, Brooklyn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), MoMA, Mercedes-Benz Museum, Chicago History Museum, deYoung Museum, και το Meropolitan Museum of Art.

Κεφάλαιο 5 Συμπεράσματα

Τα αξιώματα του McLuhan εφαρμόζονται επιτυχώς στην περιγραφή της γενικής επιρροής των ΕΜΠ στην οπτική αντίληψη και ειδικότερα στις επιπτώσεις τους στη μουσειολογία. Νέα τεχνικά μέσα για την επικοινωνία περιεχομένου στον οπτικό τομέα βρέθηκαν να επιφέρουν ριζικές τροποποιήσεις στο πώς οι άνθρωποι/δυνητικοί επισκέπτες μουσείων, αλληλεπιδρούν με τα οπτικά τους ερεθίσματα. Η κατασκευή ψηφιακών περιβαλλόντων που παρέχουν οι πλατφόρμες έχει διαμορφώσει την επανεκτίμηση φυσικών περιβαλλόντων, στο μέτρο όπου τα τελευταία μπορούν να εκληφθούν ως δυνητικά περιεχόμενα των πρώτων και συνεπώς ως δομικά στοιχεία της διαδικτυακής ταυτότητας κάποιου. Η “γλώσσα των νέων μέσων” του Manovich οδηγεί τους μουσειολόγους στην επανεξέταση του αυστηρού τους ρόλου και στην επανερμηνεία της ουσιαστικής αξίας του μουσείου μέσω της συνεκτίμησης

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των ψηφιακών χαρακτηριστικών. Τα επιχειρήματα του Manovich για τη διαρθρωτική, τροποποιήσιμη και αυτοματική φύση των αντικειμένων των νέων μέσων επιφέρουν μια σοβαρή μεταφορά εστίασης από την αξία του ίδιου του εκτιθέμενου αντικειμένου προς τη διαδικασία παραγωγής νοήματος.

Πολλές εννοιολογικές προτάσεις για τη νέα μορφή του μουσείου έχουν παρουσιαστεί στη σχετική βιβλιογραφία κατόπιν της εισαγωγής των νέων ψηφιακών και διαδικτυακών τεχνολογιών, ανάλογα με την εκάστοτε οπτική γωνία κάθε μελετητή. Το γενικότερο μήνυμα που περιέχεται στα σύγχρονα μέσα είναι παρόλα αυτά κοινό σε οποιαδήποτε ορολογία και αν χρησιμοποιείται: το μουσείο ανοίγει τις πύλες του και συνδέεται με το ευρύ κοινό. Μέσω της επιστράτευσης σύγχρονων μέσων, τα μουσεία λειτουργούν καταλυτικά στο πολιτιστικό πεδίο για την ταυτόχρονη διατήρηση, προαγωγή και παραγωγή γνώσης. Μουσειολόγοι και κοινό τείνουν να αποτελέσουν μέρη μιας οργανικής και δυναμικής συμμετρικής σχέσης, αμοιβαία επωφελούμενοι από αυτήν στη δόμηση της οντολογικής τους κατανόησης.

Τα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης στα μουσεία καλούν σε μια ριζική διεπιστημονική συνεργασία μεταξύ ειδικών που θα εστιάζει στο μουσειολογικό πεδίο, το οποίο είναι εξ' ορισμού διεπιστημονικό. Αυτή η συνεργασία θα πρέπει να εστιάσει αφενός στην παρατήρηση της επιρροής της δύναμης της εικόνας και αφετέρου στη δημιουργική αξιοποίηση της δύναμης αυτής στην προώθηση του μουσείου. Ο κόσμος μας έχει αλλάξει ραγδαία απορρίπτοντας κειμενοκεντρικές μορφές επικοινωνίας που αντικαθίστανται από κορεσμένα από εικόνες περιβάλλοντα. Οι νέες τεχνολογίες που επιτρέπουν τη διάχυση εικονικού περιεχομένου πλούσιου σε πληροφορία έχουν γίνει αναπόσπαστο μέρος της καθημερινότητάς μας και αντιστοίχως, αυτή η πραγματικότητα εντείνει την ολοένα και περισσότερο εξελιγμένη ανάπτυξη των τεχνολογιών αυτών για την καλυτέρευση της ποιότητας και της συνδεσιμότητας των εικόνων. Η διαδικασία είναι κυκλική. Στην τρέχουσα φάση του πολιτισμού μας, γινόμαστε μάρτυρες της δημοτικότητας των συνδεδεμένων έξυπνων συσκευών και των εικονοκεντρικών τους εφαρμογών που μόλις προσφάτως έχουν αποτελέσει το θέμα εμπειρικής ανάλυσης, εξέτασης και ερμηνείας.

Η παρούσα εργασία αποτέλεσε προσπάθεια προσέγγισης του φαινομένου της πολυεπίπεδης αντιληπτικής τροποποίησης στο οπτικό πεδίο και των επιπτώσεών του στις σύγχρονες μουσειολογικές πρακτικές. Η βιβλιογραφία προήλθε κυρίως από τον κλάδο της μουσειολογίας και της μελέτης μέσων. Τα κυριότερα θέματα που αφορούν το ζήτημα κατόπιν της διαδικασίας κριτικού αναστοχασμού είναι τα παρακάτω:

 οι προσδοκίες της μετάβασης από το Δίκτυο 1.0 στο 2.0 εκπεφρασμένες στο μετα-

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μουσειακό συγκείμενο

 οι δυνατότητες των ευρέως χρησιμοποιούμενων συσκευών, η κινητικότητα, συνδεσιμότητα και η ικανότητα φωτογραφικής λήψης τους

 η δύναμη της εικόνας, η ευθεία και πλουραλιστική της φύση

 η αποπλαισίωση και επαναπλαισίωση των διαθέσιμων στο διαδίκτυο εικόνων

 η αναγκαιότητα καλλιέργειας ειδικών δεξιοτήτων σε επιμελητές και μουσειολόγους για την ένταξη των ΕΜΠ σε εκπαιδευτικά προγράμματα και σε μουσειακές επικοινωνιακές στρατηγικές, ανοιχτές σε συνεργασία με ειδικούς επιστήμονες άλλων κλάδων και με το κοινό

Όπως προτάθηκε, η μελέτη της σχέσης κοινού και μουσείου μέσω των ΕΜΠ μπορεί να οδηγήσει σε πολύ ενδιαφέρουσες μελλοντικές παρατηρήσεις σχετικά με την τρέχουσα κοινωνική και πολιτιστική μας διαμόρφωση. Αυτό θα αποτελέσει αποτέλεσμα της ταυτόχρονης συγκέντρωσης των πολλαπλών φάσεων του κύκλου ζωής της γνώσης (παραγωγή, προαγωγή και διατήρηση) στο περιβάλλον του μουσείου, αποτυπωμένης και διαμοιρασμένης μέσω κινητών συσκευών και ΕΜΠ.

Ο μουσειολόγος της εποχής των ΕΜΠ οφείλει να αναλάβει το ρόλο του διαμεσολαβητή της παραγωγής νοήματος. Εάν όντως οι χρήστες ΕΜΠ εξοικειώνονται σταδιακά σε ένα περιβάλλον κορεσμένο από εικόνες στερούμενες συγκειμένου και νοήματος, ο στόχος του μουσείου οφείλει να ενισχυθεί: γίνεται ο κεντρικός τόπος ανασημασιοδότησης και επαναπλαισίωσης, ενατένισης και αναστοχασμού πάνω στα πολιτιστικά εκθέματα, καθώς επίσης και της καλλιέργειας μιας αναπτυσσόμενης οπτικής εγγραματοσύνης και παιδείας. Η πρόσκληση για συμμετοχικότητα και συνεργασία στη μουσειακή εμπειρία θα καταστήσει την παιδεία και τη γνώση μια ευχάριστη ενασχόληση ικανή να παρέχει κίνητρα και έμπνευση.

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Nicole Eisenman, Beer Garden with Ash, used as a poster for the exhibition: Painting 2.0: Painting’s Evolution in the Digital Age hosted in the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, 14 November 2015 - 30 April 2016

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